J. Walter Thompson history

New York advertising agency opened in 1871 by J. Walter Thompson; it made a fortune in the ADVERTISING INDUSTRY. The agency transformed magazines into eyecatching issues that were underwritten by advertising and reached millions of homes. It began when Thompson took over the Carlton & Smith agency (founded in 1864). Once there, he focused his attention on soliciting business for general magazines. Thompson, more than any other agent, worked up a vast amount of advertising revenue for an array of magazines, such as Good Housekeeping (1885), Vogue (1892), and House Beautiful (1896). In fact, Thompson bought virtually all the magazine space available to advertisers and controlled nearly all the advertising space in American magazines as late as 1898.

As early as the 1890s, the company established branch offices in Boston, Chicago, and London. The agency also began to create advertisements, develop trademarks, and design packages for its clients.

When J. Walter Thompson hired Stanley Resor and his brother to establish a Cincinnati office, they brought Helen Lansdowne along as the sole copywriter, later moving to the New York office. A group headed by Stanley bought out the retiring Thompson in 1916, and the following year Stanley and Helen married. The husband- and-wife team ran the agency together; he managed client services, and she supervised ad creation. The agency’s billings more than tripled, from $10.7 million in 1922 to $37.5 million by the end of the decade, making it the industry leader in total billings, a position it maintained for the next 50 years.

The agency’s president, Stanley Resor, the first major advertising executive with a college background, fostered a scientific approach to advertising. J. Walter Thompson’s demographic study, combined with the Curtis Publishing Company’s findings, provided a factual base on which future marketing researchers would build. In 1912, Stanley Resor commissioned a study entitled “Population and Its Distribution,” which listed demographics of the population by category and state. The agency continued to update the research to describe more precisely the consumer population, to track the growth of wholesale and retail stores in large cities, and so on. In 1915, the company established a research department and hired behavioral psychologist Dr. John B. Watson and other experts in the social sciences who would advance marketing research. These professionals applied motivational studies to advertising, initiated the use of scientific and medical findings as a basis for copy, and established the consumer panel, composed of families whose buying habits were surveyed and passed on to clients.

In the early 20th century, J. Walter Thompson handled many products that were purchased by women. Helen Resor’s insight added the feminine point of view. Her words and visuals embraced women’s hopes, fears, desires, and dreams regardless of what they did for a living.The powerful style worked in promoting Woodbury’s Facial Soap (“A skin you love to touch”), Crisco vegetable shortening, Maxwell House and Yuban coffee, Lux soap, and Cutex nail polish.

During the 1920s, J. Walter Thompson led the ad industry in both innovative copy styles and the variety of services offered to clients. The agency pioneered the dramatic shift from selling goods and services to using well-known psychological appeals to reach customers. The agency’s advertisement for products such as Fleischmann’s yeast, Odorono deodorant, and Lux soap successfully incorporated fear, sex, and emulation appeals. The company’s innovative methods included the sophisticated use of testimonial advertising, such as employing royalty and socialites in Pond’s advertisements, and the use of photography in advertisements. The agency also provided the best opportunities for women, with its Women’s Copy Group handling the majority of the agencies’ soap, food, drugs, and toiletries accounts.

Thompson expanded into the new medium of advertising—radio. At this time, single sponsors underwrote most of the popular shows, while their agencies served as the producers. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Radio Department produced some of the most popular shows on the air, including the Fleischmann Yeast Hour with crooner Rudy Vallee, the Chase and Sanborn Hour, and the Kraft Music Hall. Next, Thompson brought its success in radio to the new medium of television, producing the first variety show, The Hour Glass, and first dramatic show, Kraft Television Theater. When the networks assumed the programming function in the late 1950s, Thompson continued to help develop Father Knows Best, Naked City, Wagon Train, Ozzie and Harriet, Kraft Music Hall, Bat Masterson, and Have Gun Will Travel.

At the same time, the agency dominated the international field. The company had already established itself abroad as the first American agency with offices in Great Britain in 1899 and on the European continent in the 1920s. GENERAL MOTORS took the agency into Latin America in the following decade. By the end of World War II, the agency was operating 15 foreign offices and quickly added another 14.

In 1969, J. Walter Thompson became a publicly held corporation. In 1980 the firm reorganized to form a new HOLDING COMPANY, JWT Group, Inc., with J. Walter Thompson as the largest subsidiary, along with advertising, public relations, and marketing subsidiaries, which Thompson had acquired during the previous decade. During the 1980s, however, global marketers pushed international advertising expenditures to unprecedented levels. The subsequent mega-merger activity amidst agencies signaled the growing importance of putting worldwide capabilities in place to handle global clients. And in 1989, the London-based WPP group acquired both the J. Walter Thompson Company and the Ogilvy Group.

Today the J. Walter Thompson Company continues to be an industry leader, with more than 8,000 employees in 150 cities and 86 countries. In 2004, the company ranked as the fourthlargest global agency and the largest U.S. agency. The company’s roster of multinational clients includes Rolex, Kraft, Kellogg’s, Ford, Unilever, Pfizer, Reckitt Benckiser, and Schick.

Further reading

• Fox, Stephen. The Mirror Makers. A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. 
• Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. 

Juliann Sivulka