In this Vanity Fair article from 1914, commercial illustrator James Montgomery Flagg (1877 – 1960) had a good laugh at the New York ad game.
Better remembered in our own time as the creator of the iconic I Want You for the U.S. Army poster (1917), Flagg was a prolific artist and one of the highest paid magazine and advertising illustrators of his day. As the era of mass-media advertising developed, James Montgomery Flagg didn’t just have a good seat on the fifty-yard line; he was a player on the field and he saw his work reproduced in all sorts of unlikely venues. In the attached parody, he had a simply splendid time mocking that lingo that is so unique to the advertising copy writer.
“CHEW WIGGLEJAW GUM! Chew it in your own ear! Chew it for dessert! It stimulates conversation. It prevents cholera, bubonic plague, and berri-berri…”
Click here to read about how the mass-marketing techniques of the W.W. I era was used to promote KKK membership…
