Early brand mascot faces replaced human reputation as trust signals

Evidence

Like the Parisian posters, patent medicine advertisers understood the importance of using startling images and evocative words to turn the head. The Snake Oil Liniment advertisements featured Clark Stanley’s enigmatically captivating face framed between a cowboy hat and goatee; here was an early instance of the stylized visages that were typical of early branding and which persist in the likes of Aunt Jemima and the Quaker Oats Quaker man—surrogates, perhaps, for the humans whose reputation had been, in a preceding age of commerce, the cornerstone of trustworthiness. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 90

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s understanding of trust and reputation institutions (Milgrom’s law-merchant work, Social Control of Impersonal Trust) — the mascot as surrogate for trust-bearing human reputation is a direct parallel.