Family of Morons?

This is an original 1942 print ad for Young & Rubicam, Incorporated, of New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Hollywood, Montreal, and Toronto; this ad features their advertising agency. 

“It has often been said that the average American family has a depressingly low mentality, and will respond –– in politics, in entertainment, and in advertising –– only to the crudest most exaggerated appeals.

Our own research (and it is considerable) re-veals the average American as a person of prac-tical common sense, suspicious of superficiality, unaffected by bombast.

Young & Rubicam has ample proof that this average American responds to advertising that respects his intelligence and appeals to him on that level.”