Life, 1928-06-07 · page 35 of 54
Life — June 7, 1928 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Coca-Cola advertisement** disguised as satirical content. It uses Shakespeare to promote the soft drink. The illustration shows characters from *Twelfth Night* (identifiable by the caption) sharing Coca-Cola. The ad attributes a real Shakespeare quote about making one's name echo widely to suggest that Coca-Cola has achieved exactly that—becoming ubiquitous in American towns. The satire is **self-directed**: the ad jokingly claims Shakespeare himself was giving marketing advice centuries before Coca-Cola existed. The tagline "8 million a day" and the closing statement ("It had to be good to get where it is") reinforce the product's market dominance. The point: by invoking Shakespeare's authority and wit, the ad elevates a commercial product to cultural significance while implying that widespread popularity equals quality. For modern readers, this represents early **brand advertising masquerading as humor**—a technique still common today.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
What au Shakespeare says about Cte Coca-Cola “Halloo your name to the reverberate hills, and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out” ~ The Bard of Avon gave much good advice. He was different from other men in that much of his advice has been fol- lowed— particularly in the instance of the above quota- tion and Coca-Cola: The drink you read about. And the little red sign brightens the streets and corners of cities and Twelfth Night : ‘Act I, Scene 5 towns everywhere, its name more 8 m 1, lion familiar than the names of the streets themselves, IT HAD TO BE GOOD TO GET WHERE IT IS comicbooks.com