The Pabst Brewery had achieved its status as the world’s largest brewery by the 1890s.
By that same time advertising provided for the financial success of national magazines like Ladies Home Journal. No longer did articles reflect the value of a magazine. Money generated from advertisers made LHJ the most popular national magazine of its time.
The new advertising demanded that the adman include illustrations and images to promote the product. People wanted to see pictures, not just words, in an ad.
Jackson Lears writes in his book Fables of Abundance that according to a Printers Ink contributor in 1898, not words but pictures constituted “the quickest-acting medium for the transmission of one man’s thought to another man’s mind.”
It was in that kind of advertising environment that A. Cressy Morrison, advertising manager at Pabst, guided the promotion of the Pabst product called The Best Tonic.
Advertising was changing mass publishing, and Cressy was in the midst of it.