J. Walter Thompson

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J. Walter Thompson

Number one in industry billings from 1922 to 1972, the J. Walter Thompson agency redefined the advertising industry and transformed the business of media in America. Founded in New York City as Carlton and Smith in 1864, the agency was originally a broker of advertising space in religious journals. The agency hired its namesake, James Walter Thompson, in 1868. Thompson purchased the agency from William James Carlton in 1877, renamed it after himself, and rapidly positioned it as the exclusive seller of advertising space in many leading American magazines.

Most large magazines had existed on subscription and newsstand revenue alone. To create a market for ad space, Thompson persuaded reluctant publishers—who feared advertisements would tarnish their images—to accept advertising in their pages. Thereafter, America's largest magazines relied on advertising as their largest source of revenue, increasing the import of the composition of a publication's readership, and its appeal to advertisers.

Stanley Resor joined the company in 1908, and soon hired copywriter Helen Lansdowne. He purchased the agency in 1916 and the two were married the next year. Together they remade the agency and developed it from a mere broker of space into a full service shop that conceived and executed major national advertising campaigns.

Print advertising of the previous era emphasized brand identity, iconic images, and simple slogans. J. Walter Thompson pioneered a new strategy aimed at delivering a "hard-sell" print ad, known as the "reason-why" approach. These advertisements typically captured the reader's attention with a bold, capitalized statement accompanied by an artistic or arresting image. The ad copy methodically outlined each selling point of the product and ended with a free or reduced-price product offer.

Women made most household purchasing decisions at this time and Helen Lansdowne Resor, in her words, "added the feminine point of view" to advertising to ensure that it was "effective for women." Her wing of the offices was known as the Women's Copy Group. Among the most famous advertisements produced under Helen Lansdowne Resor were campaigns for Lux soap, Maxwell House coffee, and Crisco shortening. Her infamous "A skin you love to touch" ad for Woodbury's Facial Soap featured a man seductively caressing a woman's arm and kissing her hand. The overt sexuality caused a number of Ladies' Home Journal readers to cancel their subscriptions but launched one of the most successful selling techniques of all time.

In 1912, Stanley Resor commissioned the market research study, "Population and Its Distribution." The study detailed both the composition of the American population and the distribution of retail and wholesale stores across the cities and rural areas. In 1915 Resor was the first to open a research department, inaugurating the massive efforts of corporate America to determine consumer desires.

As part of this effort, Resor hired John Hopkins University behavioral psychologist John B. Watson in 1920. Watson theorized that humans are capable of only three basic emotions—love, fear, and rage—and sought to tap these feelings with advertising. Watson's application of psychology to advertising anticipated the later use of psychological and subliminal selling techniques.

Watson's hiring coincided with the trend toward "whisper" advertising that sowed insecurity in the reader. One such J. Walter Thompson ad, for Odorono deodorant in 1919, read in part, "It is a physiological fact that persons troubled by underarm odor seldom detect it themselves." The use of testimonials from stars, such as Joan Crawford's 1927 endorsement of Lux Soap, was another of the agency's firsts.

The J. Walter Thompson agency first led the industry in billings for 1922, and held that position for the next 50 years, its revenues growing from $10 million to nearly $1 billion during this period. By 1938, national radio advertising surpassed that in magazines. As with magazine publishers, early radio operators initially resisted commercial advertising. But by 1933, J. Walter Thompson's clients sponsored nine weekly shows including Kraft Music Hall and the Fleischmann Yeast Hour. Products were promoted in short "spots" that lasted from 15 seconds to a couple of minutes and were often live mini-dramas in their own right complete with original jingles. Television advertising adopted the same model in the 1940s and 1950s.

As a result of J. Walter Thompson's innovations, most media depend upon advertising as their primary source of revenue. Advertising is so culturally ubiquitous and established that advertisements themselves are considered an art form worthy of serious critique. Numerous awards annually honor outstanding work.

Americans are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages each year and most can recite slogans and jingles from their most, or least, favorite advertisements. "Where's the beef?"—a line from a Wendy's restaurants television spot of the 1980s—was embraced so eagerly by the public that Walter Mondale used it as a rejoinder in a presidential debate. The Nixon Administration's machinations and untruths once led Ralph Nader to label it a "J. Walter Thompson production" and, in fact, five of Nixon's top aides were former employees. The creative pressure and client dependency that is the recognizable perpetual state of agencies was captured in television programs such as Bewitched in the 1960s and thirtysomething in the 1980s.

In the 1950s, J. Walter Thompson was one of the first agencies to aggressively expand internationally, eventually growing into a global corporation. It finally lost its number one billings ranking in the 1970s when smaller "hot shops" emerged as creative boutiques more in tune with the era's cultural shifts and other large global agencies grew to comparable size and reach. In 1980 it became a subsidiary of JWT Group Inc., a Delaware-based holding company that was in turn purchased by the British marketing firm WPP Group in 1987.

The J. Walter Thompson agency's influence on the multi-billion dollar advertising industry and the media it supports was profound. Informative, persuasive, seductive, and intrusive, advertising became omnipresent in the national media and the national consciousness. As the industry leader for decades, both creatively and financially, J. Walter Thompson defined the advertising agency to a public inundated with its product.

—Steven Kotok