Humor as a Means of Audience Influence in Spanish Cosmetics Brand Advertising in the First Third of the 20th Century

Humor was inherent in Spanish advertising texts from 1900 to 1930 as part of national and linguistic identity. This article describes the linguistic, ethnopsychological, and sociocultural aspects of humor in Spanish advertising as a means of audience influence. In the early 20th century, Spanish advertising started using visualization to support verbal communication and enhance its effect on consumers’ minds. The research featured 142 creolized ads from the Catalan company Cortés Hermanos to identify the methods of audience manipulation as a national marketing strategy in early Spanish advertising. The stylistic, structural-semantic, descriptive, cognitive, and conceptual analyses revealed the following advertising strategies: 1) the use of a comic effect in communicating information; 2) national and cultural components; 3) brand recall techniques; 4) stylization to disguise the advertising nature of the text.

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