Life, 1925-07-09 · page 41 of 42
Life — July 9, 1925 — page 41: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece from Life magazine argues that **consumers hold power over advertisers**, not vice versa. The cartoon shows a smug consumer (labeled "Andy Consumer") dismissing advertising's influence. The argument: advertising is expensive, so companies can't afford one-time sales—they must continuously advertise to encourage repeat purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations. This means consumers control whether products succeed. If ads fool people once but the product disappoints, those consumers become adversaries ("pow-wower" = a gathering where grievances are aired). Only products that pass the "acid consumer test" through repeated purchases survive. The satire targets big business confidence in advertising's persuasive power. It's anti-advertising propaganda framed as consumer empowerment, published by Life to boost confidence in merchandise quality during an era when advertising was rapidly expanding and consumers remained skeptical of commercial manipulation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE DONATES THiS SERIES IN BEHALF OF BETTER MERCHANDISE IU! check up en Ahig EW tar elhser and see ix SF went Ho ket him feve ADVERTISING CAN’T PUT ANYTHING OVER ON ME —or anybody else. I'm pleased that advertising is an expensive sport for you big business boys. Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! We consumers laugh. The high cost of nation-wide adver- tising puts the situation entirely in our hands. Yes, we must laugh. If you advertise, you can’t afford to sell us just ONCE. You can't adver- tise and then run off and hide. We are poor pickin’ until we repeat our purchase and pass the good word. And what if we don’t repeat our purchase and pass the good word? What then? You may ballyhoo us into buying one package or box or can, but re- member where you'll be if we don’t buy two. Fool us once if you will, Jack Dal- ton, but remember that after that we have you in our pow-wower. Continuous advertisers are, there- fore, birds who have passed our acid consumer test. Hedy Consumer THE NATIONAL ADVERTISER BETS HIS ADVERTISING MONEY THAT HIS PRODUCT IS RIGHT comicbooks.com