Lord & Thomas

Advertising in Chicago

INTRODUCTION:
Founded in Chicago by Daniel Lord and Ambrose Thomas, 1881; Albert Lasker joined the agency, 1898; Mr. Lasker became sole owner of Lord & Thomas, 1912; L&T merged with Thomas Logan Inc. and briefly added Logan to its name, 1926; resumed operations as L&T, 1928; Mr. Lasker relinquished presidency, 1938; Mr. Lasker gave the agency to the heads of its three main offices, 1942; opened as Foote, Cone & Belding, 1943.

LOCATIONS:
Lord & Thomas
1878-1896 McCormick Block II, 45, 47 & 49 Randolph
1896-1910 Trude Building, 132 N. Wabash
1910-1921 Mallers Building, SW Corner of Quincy and LaSalle
1921-1928 Wrigley Building, 400 N. Michigan
1928-1949 Palmolive Building, 919 N. Michigan
Foote, Cone & Belding
1949-1965 155 E. Superior
1965-1987 401 N. Michigan
1987-2010 101 E. Erie

Inter Ocean, June 8, 1878

Lord, Brewster & Co., advertising agents, compelled by increasing business to seek larger quarters, have taken the commodious rooms Nos. 3 and 4 McCormick Block. They are enterprising, energetic young men, and we heartily wish them the success they deserve.

Inter Ocean, February 8, 1881

Lord & Thomas
The advertising firm of Lord, Brewster & Co., who have become well known throughout the West, has been dissolved. Mr. Brewster retires to engage in other business. Mr. Lord continues the business at the old stand, and has associated with him Mr. A. L. Thomas, who, for ten years past, has had the management of the office of one of the leading advertising agencies of Boston. The new firm will be known as Lord & Thomas, and with the qualifications that each possess for his special department, will make a strong team.

Chicago Daily Telegraph, February 19, 1881

A NEW FIRM.
Mr. D. M. Lord, of the late advertising agency of Lord, Brewster & Co., has now formed a business connection with Mr. A. L. Thomas, a gentleman who has long been identified with the advertising agency of T. C. Evans, in Boston. The new firm, owing to the long experience of its members, will be able to transact the business entrusted to them in a satisfactory manner.

Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1883

Every Trade Must Have Its Man.
The frontiersman must be enough of a blacksmith to shoe his horse and enough of a carpenter to build his cabin. After a time the blacksmith and carpenter become his neighbors and the work is properly divided. So the merchant who starts a store in a new town must deal in all articles known to the trade. By and by a druggist arrives, and the general merchant orders no more drugs. Then comes the grocer, and the handling of groceries is relegated to him. The hardware merchant, the tinner, the clothier, etc., follow in quick succession, and the pioneer merchant soon finds himself with a stock on hand composed exclusively of dry goods. The same division of labor is seen in every well-regulated store in Chicago.

Within the last few years there has been a revolution in the ways of advertising, and it has been effected by the advertising firm at Lord & Thomas, and they already have as their clients many of the largest wholesale and retail firms here. The plan is very simple, so far as the advertiser is concerned. He decides monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually how much money he desires to expend, informs his agent, gets the full benefit of his large experience, facilities, and information, closes the contract, and has no further trouble. The relations, being similar to those of attorney and client, are confidential, and the advertiser assured that service rendered will be of the the best.

Under this new system Lord & Thomas’ business has assumed immense proportions. Formerly they occupied only Rooms 9 and 10 in McCormick Block, but recently they have been compelled to add to them Rooms 7, 8, and 11 in the same building, or nearly three times the space they had before, and still they are crowded. A glance through their busy establishment is of interest. Room 7, at the extreme north end of the suite, is the private office, occupied by the proprietors, Messrs. Lord & Thomas. Adjacent to this is Room 8, used as the general business office, where eight clerks are busily engaged. Here also is the desk of Mr. R. S. Thain, the manager of the city department.

In Room 9 are the order and general registry and checking departments, in charge of Capt. Samuel Hildeburn, who also superintends the file department. From this room orders are sent to city and country newspapers with the aid of phonograpby and typewriter. Some idea at the magnitude of the business may be had from the fact that 6,000 newspapers are regularly received and handled here. Each one has to be scanned and checked for advertisements published under contraet with the firm. By an ingenious system of check-marks the bill rendered to the advertiser shows everything that he may desire to know in connection with his particular “ad.”

Of the great file-rooms—a labyrinth of pigeonholes reaching from floor to ceiling—it is enough to say that of the 6,000 papers received the weeklies are kept for six months and the dailies for three months for the inspection of all advertisers dealing with the firm. Lord & Thomas claim that their daily mail is larger than that of any other similar concern in Chicago. In developing their perfect system Lord & Thomas have kept three things prominently. in view-viz.: that an advertisement should be printed in an attractive style; that it should be published in the right medium-that is, where it will do the most good; and that the cost should not be in excess of its actual value. The firm have a printing department, and in this connection it may be stated incidentally that Lord & Thomas deal largely in printing materials, such as type, ink, roller composition, etc., for the supply of country newspapers. The idea that governs some advertising agencies is to get ail the money possible out of an advertiser. Lord & Thomas ides, and the one on which they have increased their business fivefold within two years, is to take only what a man or firm ean judiciously expend, and place it where it will bring in the most ample returns.

A special feature of Lord & Thomas’ business is the control of the advertising columns of the six leading religious papers in Chicago. Mr. C. D. Paine is the manager of this department. Lord & Thomas claim that theirs is the only thoroughly equipped agency in Chicago, and its equipment is only in proportion to the amount of business done. These gentlemen have so thoroughly systematized advertising as to make it almost one of the exact sciences.

Inter Ocean, March 13, 1886

In New Quarters.
Messrs. Lord & Thomas, of Chicago, the well-known and popular advertising agents, are about to move into new quarters, which are so spacious, so elegant, and so original and novel in their appointments, that they deserve more than a passing notice.

The building, Nos, 45, 47, and 49 Randolph street, between State street and Wabash avenue, is at once the most striking in appearance and the most elegant in Chicago. Built of sandstone, it is 70 by 174 feet, practically fire-proof, and lignted on four sides. Three large elevators and two spacious stairways give abundant facilities for passengers and freight.

Messrs. Lord & Thomas will occupy the entire third floor, giving them a superficial area of nearly 12,000 square feet. This beautifully lighted room is unbroken by partitions, save a private office in one corner, thus bringing the entire working force of about sixty clerks into one spacious room, certainly the largest office of any advertising agency in the country, if not the largest business office of any kind on the continent.

The various departments are so arranged that the work passes along with almost mechanical regularity.

While the entire appointments are elegant, the filing department is arranged on an entirely, new principle, which amounts to an important invention. Heretofore advertising agents have filed their newspapers in wooden pigeon-holes, which not only excluded the light, but caught and retained the dust, and thus proved a nuisance. The new filing department of Messts. Lord & Thomas is made entirely of wire-work; a separate compartment is made for each newspaper, magazine, and periodical in the United States and Canada, about fourteen thousand in all. The various sections are suspended from the ceiling, and hang clear of the floor, leaving a space under each one so that the entire floor can be swept.

Space will not permit us to describe this important improvement in detail. The principles upon which it is constructed will be covered by letters patent.

The National Wire and Iron Company, of Detroit, Mich, have been awarded the contract of the work, and are rapidly pushing it forward to completion.

Our friends who wish to see a copy of our paper when in Chicago can always find it on file at the agency of Messrs Lord & Thomas.

Chicago Tribune, May 24, 1896

Recent Realty Sales and Leases.
In the Trude Building, southwest corner of Randolph and Wabash avenue, now in course of erection, the tenth and eleventh floors to Lord & Thomas Advertising company

The Fourth Estate, June, 1897

AN ENTERPRISING AGENCY.
A Few Interesting Points Concerning the Lord Thomas Advertising Agency of Chicago.
Enterprise permeates the entire establishment likewise a perfect system which is soon evident to the most careless visitor

The heads of the firm, D. M. Lord and A. L. Thomas are two of Chicago’s best known business men. They keep in personal touch with the details of their business. C. H. Touzalin, E. E. Kunkel, W. R. Emery, G. D. Kendall, J. W. Campbell, J. F. Ryan and C. D. Bertolet constitute the soliciting force. They are carefully selected and competent bringers of business—a most important part of the personnel of the agency.

Another important division of the business is the estimating department conducted by E. E. Bullls. This department is devoted to the study of the quality and circulation of different advertising mediums and the preparation of estimates on advertising.

The order department under P. V. Troup is mathematically a marvel the system of handling advertisers’ orders from the first to the last insertions being perfect Publishers know that their relations with this department are cordial and advertisers have therefore realized that in so far as it is possible they get every advantage which may properly be granted them.

The departments of advertisement writing and illustrating are important factors in this business. D. H. Moore is the writer and J. M. Doyle the artist.

A complete printing plant under the direction of MacD. Conger, sets in type all the advertisements sent out by Lord Thomas.

The checking department on the floor above tho business office is perhaps the most complete in existence tons of newspapers from all ever the world being stored away in such shape that they can be got out at a moment’s notice. B. F. Kirtland is in charge.

Not only are advertisements carefully checked off so that at the end of each day the work’ is complete but the. advertiser at the completion of his contract finds in the office the publications containing his ad. and the proofs that his instructions have been faithfully followed.

Advertising bills from the papers are first compared with the records of the checking department then passed to the bookkeeping or auditing department presided over-by the general office manager I. P. Fell and cashier’s department in charge of E. F. Brown, Jr.

Inter Ocean, June 4, 1898

Will Give All the Facts.
The following brief correspondence will prove of interest to all readers of The Inter Ocean and advertisers in all parts of the country:

The Inter Ocean

Sunday Tribune

The Inter Ocean

D. W. BOWLES, Business Manager

Lord & Thomas, Newspaper Advertising, Chicago, June 3, 1898.—Mr. D. W. Bowles. Business Manager The Inter Ocean, Chicago, Ill.—Dear Mr. Bowles: I am in receipt of your favor of even date in reference to making examination of the circulation of the Dally and Sunday Inter Ocean.

I will bring the matter of the request yon make for the examination of your circulation to the attention of Mr. Frank H. Cooper, who is chairman of the committee, and I have no doubt he will give it prompt attention, and call the committee together. It is a step in the right direction, one which I heartily approve of, and I will do all I can, as a member of that committee, to have an examination made at the earliest possible moment. Very truly yours, A. L. THOMAS.

The committee which will investigate the circulation books of The Inter Ocean consists of A. L. Thomas of Lord & Thomas, Frank H. Cooper of Siegel, Cooper & Co., Ralph Peck of Mandel Bros., and J. H. Wood of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co.

It is, of course, unnecessary to point out the reliability of such men, but the thoroughness with which they will do their work should be mentioned in this instance The Inter Ocean asks and expects to have its Daily as well as its Sunday edition fully investigated by an examination of the books by experts. The Inter Ocean wishes its advertisers to know exactly what they are paying for, not only on Sunday but on every day in the year. This information our advertisers are entitled to, and we propose to present it to them in the most complete, accurate, and reliable form possible. Other newspapers may show such part of their circulation as is thought to be favorable to them, but The Inter Ocean is not afraid to tell all the truth.

Inter Ocean, March 4, 1900

A PARIS EXHIBIT
Of Unusual Interest to Advertisers and Publishers.
Among the American exhibits at the Paris exposition the one that will posses the greatest interest for the advertiser and publisher is that of the Lord & Thomas Advertising Agency of Chicago and New York, a feature of which is an immense map of the United States, occupying a wall space of 16×18 feet, depicting the publishing interest of the various states and territories, printed figures in each denoting the area, population, number of publications, the circulation per issue, and the percentage of circulation to the population of the more populous states being subdivided into two or more sections—figures which are interesting to the general public and of inestimable value to the advertiser as a guide in effecting a judicious distribution of his advertising appropriation.

A further tabulation of statistics, taking each state or territory of the US entirety, shows the value of plants, number of employes, average hours of labor, wage and average cost per inch for yearly advertising. To complete the compilation and tabulation of the statistics required the constant service ot a large corps of trained employes for a period of time extending over thre months: the Information and figures being gathered from every authentic source tbe various government bureaus, of census, labor. Department of the Interior, official statistics of th different state and territories, etc, and the special, private information kept on file by Messrs. Lord Thomas, to be used for the benefit of their clients. Th remarkably short time in which this work was accomplished due to especially informed and efficient employes with which that firm have surrounded themselves.

It is especially interesting to note how clearly indicated is the thoroughness of the American press as a means of publicity, and the high average of literacy of the people. exceeding that of any other nation.

Any advertiser contemplating an expenditure in newspaper advertising space would do well to send to Messrs. Lord & Thomas for one of these vary instructive and comprehensive maps.

Inter Ocean, October 3, 1900

Lard & Thomas Win Grand Prize.
Lord & Thomas, of Chicago and New York, the only advertising agency represented at the Paris Exposition, have been awarded the grand prize—highest—honor for their unique and interesting map, which has received most favorable mention from the press and public. This exhibit was shown in the Liberal Arts Department. American advertising methods, as exemplified in the Lord & Thomas display, showing, as it does, another reason for American supremacy in the commercial world, have awakened great interest among merchants of ail civilized nations.

San Francisco Call and Post, March 12, 1901

If printers’ ink is of any value, then California should be rolling in wealth from tourists’ trade,” said A. L. Thomas of the firm of Lord & Thomas, advertising experts of Chicago, who is at present staying at the Palace Hotel.

Mr. Thomas says that it is impossible to pick up an Eastern magazine of any prominence that does not carry one or two pages of advertisements placed there by railroad companies, drawing the reader’s attention to the benefits to be derived from a winter spent in California.

The great oil discoveries in California are also attracting a great deal of atten; tion in the East, says Mr. Thomas, and numbers of the rich men of the “Windy City” are closely watching the discover-les, and will, no doubt, send agents out here to investigate the oil lands.

The Lord & Thomas Advertising Company of Chicago is one of the largest agencies of its kind in the world. The firm handles all the advertising of the Armour Company, the Annheuser-Busch Company and the Michigan Stove Company.

A. L. Thomas is also the president of the Sterling Remedy Company, which does an enormous business, the sales of Cascarets, one of its remedies, amounting to more than 1,000,000 boxes a year.

Mr. Thomas is here for a much-needed rest, and will remain in San Francisco for some time.

Printers’ Ink, April 18, 1906

The Lord & Thomas Agency, in Chicago, with a branch office in New York City, now claims the distinction of being the largest general advertising agency United States Some interesting figures are made public back this claim:

Since D. M. Lord retired two years ago there have been decided changes in Lord & Thomas’s methods. One of these took the form of advertising. More than $40,000 was spent last year in periodicals, seeking new business. Probably no other agency has spent so much money in publicity for itself. A more larger appropriation will be spent this year, along different lines. Last year’s advertising paid handsomely in new accounts. Another change of policy is found in the personnel of the agency. While A. L. Thomas is now at the head and front of its affairs, active carrying out of details is largely entrusted to C. R. Erwin and A. D. Lasker. Mr. Lasker, secretary and treasurer of the company is only twenty-five years old, but has been with the agency eight years, coming from Galveston, Texas, at seventeen to begin work as a solicitor at $10 a week. Mr. Erwin, vice-president, has been with Lord & Thomas more than twenty years. He booked more business in 1905 than anyone else on the staff, handling personally advertising aggregating over a half million. Mr. D. L. Taylor, though not a stockholder, was elected second vice-president and a director because of his value to the business, and is connected with the copy and campaign department. He is said to receive the largest salary ever paid any advertising man in the West. The agency has also secured some of the best solicitors and copy men in the West. Its staff includes men like J. F. Ryan, W. T. Jefferson, and C. H. Touzalin, etc. The organization has been built up of late years with a view to handling accounts by a distinctive method. Mr. Lasker gave an extensive insight into this method the other day for Printers’ Ink.

“We want to convey the impression that while Lord & Thomas are the largest agency in the country we do not seek to handle large accounts to the exclusion of small ones. In fact, we would hesitate to confine our operations to a half-dozen very large accounts. What if we lost one? A frightful hole would be made in our business. We seek particularly accounts ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 a year, and to scatter a number of, them over a wide range of commodities. So we are placing advertising today for a wider range of commodities and articles, perhaps, than any other agency.

‘Don’t go with a big agency!’ is the advice given small, new advertisers; ‘your account will be lost among the big ones—you won’t get attention or service. This isn’t good advice. We are the biggest agency because we have built on hundreds of small accounts . For this reason our whole organization is designed to give the smallest individual attention. Growth depends on it. And we have data about results from so many advertisers that our service could not possibly be obtained from any agency with a few accounts and a narrow range of commodities to push. The very fact that we market so many different articles through advertising gives us experience and judgment invaluable to any advertising. This year we will place $2,500,000 in general business and $1,500,000 in mail-order lines. No other agency in the world handles so much mail-order business. Our mail accounts bring absolute data upon the pulling power of newspapers, magazines, mail-order, farm, religious and trade journals. On this data we depend for knowledge that enables us to start general advertiser in the right mediums from the very beginning and give him returns that mean growth without the waste money that would come from experimental work

Most agencies make a with an advertiser when his contract is taken. But this contract varies with different agencies. Often is not only an agreement to spend the advertiser’s money judiciously and take a stated commission on his expenditure. Our contract is very different. We don’t believe any agency has one so comprehensive. Our whole organization depends on it. This contract names twelve duties agree to perform for the advertiser constituting what we understand by the word service. It also binds the advertiser to certain duties which must faithfully carry out for our guidance. He must, when it is practicable make a weekly report returns from his advertising, specifying the number replies replies received from each advertisement and medium in mail campaigns or increase in sales when goods are sold through retailers. We bind ourselves to compare each advertiser’s report with statistics other clients ascertaining whether his advertising is paying ought to, and discovering defects when not. Of course, we treat these reports in strict confidence. This information is tabulated in what we call our record results. The latter is the guiding spirit of our business gives us positive knowledge about copy and mediums in widely varied lines of publicity, minimizes experimental work, eliminates the element of chance. We have developed this record of results for six years. I don’t think any other agency in the world has anything like it. All must adopt it eventually. But we have six years’ start. Now, with this body of information, pouring in weekly from scores of advertisers in all lines, embracing returns from every good publication the country on clothing, foods, stoves, medicines, mail merchandise and every form of commodity, we quickly discover either an obscure publication that is strong or a prominent one that is weak. Sixty-six per cent of general advertising checked by thirty-four per cent mail order publicity is a ratio we carefully maintain because, we believe that mail order advertising is an invaluable guide to safe procedure in general advertising, when properly interpreted. A publication that pulls direct replies by mail, as a rule will also send people into retail stores to ask for advertised goods The same kind of copy that pulls best for mail-order commodity will, when rightly adapted, also get money out of people’s pockets in the stores.

Our record results shows numerous surprising cases where small publications pull better than big ones. When a publication begins to pay it can’t remain hidden from us. Many old publications of immense prestige have circulations that have been worked over and over again, so their general reputation among advertisers is often out of all proportion to actual returns brings from keyed advertisements. Other mediums, comparatively new, or just being built up, without much prestige may have a new, live, growing circulation that makes them highly profitable. For example, in a certain Southern city there is a daily newspaper of wide reputation, old and great in circulation. It has a competitor in the same town new and with smaller circulation We tried out both papers on mail propositions favor with astonishing results in favor of the smaller paper. Then a general commodity, selling in stores was tried in both with the same result. Many of our clients were then put into this new medium, and nearly all got sales and inquiries at one-tenth the cost in the older paper. Our clients get into such a medium long before its reputation is established generally.

Here is another instance: The Philadelphia German Gazette’s Sunday issue lately brought one of our advertisers sixty-four replies from one insertion of a $6 ad, when half as many were received from our English Sunday papers in the same city at a cost of $30. The English papers, though, were considered profitable at this figure. So, you see, we have a positive gauge on mediums and copy such as is probably to be found nowhere else. Our system of centralized records, based on reports from advertisers, not only indicates the line of least resistance quickly and infallibly, but the expenditure of our largest client serves as a guide in the development of our smallest, and vice versa. This is why we solicit the small advertiser—because the magnitude our business and the number our accounts are in his favor, and because with a business confined to a few large accounts we should be going blind on every one of them. The large account is helped by the small accounts help us with large.

Advertisers seldom realize how quickly the character of a circulation may change. A mail order advertiser, for instance, finds a certain publication one of his most profitable mediums for several seasons. He drops out some summer. When he begins again in the fall that paper does not pay. He blames his copy, changes it, goes in again. Still no return. He finds other reasons for failure. The publication has always paid, and it is the last thing he blames. Five or six failures may be necessary before he is willing to distrust the paper. But we have received. a report of failures from a dozen advertisers on that paper. We know copy can’t be wrong with all, so the paper comes under suspicion. If it is really weak, all our advertisers are out within a month, and there is a big aggregate saving. Think what this means in dollars to the small advertiser. How does this work out for a general advertiser? Well, take the case mentioned of the two dailies in the Southern city. The returns for mail advertising in the smaller paper woke us up. We investigated at close range and found that all the retail advertisers in that city were using the smaller paper, too. They were alive to conditions. So we put our general advertisers into it. One of them sent us $2,000 for the older paper while this investigation was going on. We explained the situation. He sent a representative to that town and found that his money would probably pay three times as much results in the smaller paper, or 300 per cent. He changed his order, and got the increase expected. Other advertisers and agencies are still going into the wrong medium on Its generally reputation.

Our centralized records also indicate the most effective kinds of copy. A page In Munsey’s costs $500. It may bring $5,000 to an advertiser, or only $2. The difference in returns in so good a medium will be due to copy—nothing else whatever. What goes into the space—that makes the difference. Our Copy Department is so organized that no writer handles more than twelve accounts a year—or fewer, probably, than with any other agency in the country. Our conception of good copy is that it must be both spontaneous in style and studied in its subject matter. An advertisement may embody every point in a selling plan that draws, yet be so stiff and stilted no one will want to read it. Again, it may read well, and be clever, off-hand, utterance of great attraction, yet have none of the real points that sell goods. By studied spontaneity we mean copy that combines both these qualities. Copy is very, very important. While our knowledge of mediums is vital, the system of centralized records indicates it, you might say, almost automatically. Therefore, ninety per cent of the thought, energy and cost of running our agency goes into copy. We have stated that our copy staff costs us four times as that of any other agency. No one has disproved this statement. We often put months of work on copy for a single campaign, and change the whole selling plan of a commodity. One of our new clients was impatiently asking why we take so long to prepare his copy. We told him that it would take thirty days more. If the delay was operating against us he was at liberty to cancel his contract. He didn’t, though and subsequent events showed that this very revision made his campaign a success where hasty work would have meant failure. The line between successful and unsuccessful copy is not broad. But it is definite. General advertising copy has always been allowed wide margin for errors because they could not traced under old conditions. Mail order advertisers have allowed no margin for errors, but demanded exactitude and keyed replies. With our records from mail-order advertising we determine forms that pay best and applied these to general accounts. Our margin for errors general campaigns is now small. It is growing smaller. It will one day disappear. In copy, too, we discriminate by refusing accounts for certain objectionable commodities—bad medical consumption cures, ‘weak men’ women’s remedies, etc. And our copy department is so organized that though a writer were the best copy-man in the country the element of personality in his work for any of our clients would have less to do with its pulling power of than the selling reasons it embodies, based on our record of results. The lesson constantly taught by these to our staff makes each writer stronger because he is guided by positive knowledge, and his work is more certain than he could do without our organization, because he is working on definite data along definite lines, for definite ends. We are not a one-man agency. We are not publishers. We have no interest in any publication used by advertiser. When our solicitors bring in a certain number of new accounts—all that we can serve properly for the time being— we recall them so that attention can be given the new business. We furnish no free plans for newspaper or magazine advertising, but require from a prospective client assurance of a certain minimum commission to compensate for investigating his proposition The key the agency is service. By service we have whipped into success many a proposition that had failed for want of a selling plan, or selling force in copy, or proper selection of mediums.

Lord & Thomas have lately been admitted into membership in the Billposters and Distributors’ Association and are also authorized representatives for street-car advertising throughout the country. W. T. Jefferson, who heads their outdoor department, is said to be one the best writers and managers of billboard advertising in the country. He originated the silhouette Gold Dust twins for billboard purposes , the Fairy Soap fairy, the “Ham what am,” Armour’s “Veribest,” etc. The agency has had the good sense to engage him conditions that leave him free to attend to nothing but billboard and bulletin work. It is not generally realized how different outdoor advertising is in its nature from periodical publicity. They are wide apart as outdoors and indoors. A separate staff works under Mr. Jefferson preparing copy, checking, etc., and the outdoor advertising department is one that is being pushed aggressively. The billboard isn’t pretty, always, but as a medium it can’t be downed, and nowadays the national campaign that doesn’t include posting is a curiosity .

Mr. Lasker took a good deal of pains to show the writer the inner workings of the record of results department. Eight people tabulate and file information from advertisers’ reports. The cold, hard figures, often in dollars and cents, go down onto cards that are classified according to States and publications. About 4,000 publications, in the United States and Canada, out of the whole 22,000 issued, are deemed worthy of a place in this record. Mediums are shown up completely. Pull out any good paper’s card. On it is the record of returns for the last week on from three to three dozen different commodities. Each advertiser got so many replies and sales, at such and such cost, and there is no way of getting behind the returns. If the publisher who advertises his publication in general terms could see his card he would probably go home and tear up all his printed assertions and claims. And the publisher who advertises by fact and figure would probably learn surprising things about his own paper. In the past six years it has cost $100,000 to maintain this record cabinet. It is nine feet high, and twenty feet long, and shows the record every important publication relentlessly for six years, its goings out and comings in, and where it fell down, and it when got up again. Every year adds its value. Among the interesting data is a record of the agency’s pwn advertising last summer.

“Why did you choose the middle of hot weather to lay your story before advertisers?” was asked.

“Because that is when they are planning,” replied Mr. Lasker. “Business men have more time to read in summer. We sent out to inquiries and mailing lists over 7,000 copies of our book on advertising.

Judging by the amount of interest created a good many other agents, as well as publishers, solicitors, special agents, etc., must have sent for copies.”

Mr. Lasker smiled. “We don’t know how many there were,” he said. “But it is safe to assume that every agent, solicitor and This publisher sent for a copy. This year we are sending out a dozen books, one each month, bound like the Temple Shakespeare, with a chapter on advertising. Anybody interested has simply to write for them.”

The Lord & Thomas agency is rather old in years, dating from 1873, when it was established as Sharp & Lord. D. M. Lord was junior partner. The senior, Mr. Sharp, was an Englishman, thoroughly posted on advertising of that day. Later the firm was Chandler, Sharp, Lord & Co., then Lord, Brewster & Co. In 1881 the firm of Lord & Thomas was formed. Mr. Lord and Mr. Thomas were associated nearly a quarter century. In 1904 the former withdrew and retired, disposing of his interests to Messrs. Erwin and Lasker, who with Mr. Thomas now own the business. These three, with Mr. Taylor, are directors of the company. Ambrose L. Thomas, the president, was born in Thomaston, Maine , and began life as an errand boy on the old Boston Traveler, coming to Chicago after ten years’ experience in the the Hub. With Mr. Erwin, he supervises the agency’s finances. It is interesting to note that the loss in bad credits last year was only one tenth of one per cent. Mr. Thomas is also one the largest owners of “Cascarets,” an active director in two Chicago banks, and has other important interests. He supervises the agency and holds the staff together in a fatherly way, and the influence of his personality is great. But active carrying out policy and details is chiefly the hands of Messrs. Erwin and Lasker. The former’s judgement is considered among the soundest obtainable on advertising operations. Mr. Lasker enjoys a degree of confidence and an initiative that has probably been given to no man of his few years in publishing or advertising affairs. Speaking of him, Mr. Thomas said that he had come to the agency as an office boy, and by thoroughness and his capacity to originate and direct had risen to be one of its heads. His work now deals almost wholly with planning of campaigns of advertising and distribution for clients.

Chicago Tribune,June 2, 1926

The formation of a new International advertising agency, merging the businesses now conducted by Lord & Thomas of Chicago and Thomas F. Logan, Inc., of New York is announced by Albert D. Lasker, former chairman of the United States shipping board and for many years chairman of the board and president of Lord & Thomas.

The new corporation will be known as Lord & Thomas and Logan. Mr. Lasker will be chairman of the board, and Mr. Logan Will be president. Other executive officers of the corporation will be elected from the officers of the two merged companies.
Mr. Laker, in making the announcement, said:

Lord & Thomas, with a record of 53 years of continuous operation, were pioneers in introducing printed salesmanship. Thomas F. Logan, Inc., although organized only seven years ago, has already won a notable position in the advertising field under the management of Mr. Logan, who will be come president of the consolidated company.

The corporation will have principal offices in New York and Chicago, with branch offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, and London.

Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1928

Lord & Thomas Take 2 Floors in New Palmolive Building.
Lord & Thomas & Logan, one of the oldest advertising agencies in the country and a pioneer in the now popular trek from loop to north side, have decided to take another step northward. They are to move from the Wrigley building, of which they were a first tenant, to the Palmolive building, now climbing skyward at Michigan and Walton.

According to Ross & Browne, renting and managing agents of Palmolive, the ad firm has leased the entire 17th and 18th floors, containing 15,386 square feet, for ten years from next May, at a total term rental of $478,404.

Lord & Thomas started in business in 1872 with Daniel M. Lord and A. L. Thomas as partners. Albert D. Lasker is chairman of the board. In July, 1926, the firm was merged with Thomas F. Logan, Inc., of New York. The first office of Lord & Thomas, fifty-six years ago, was in the McCormick block, at Randolph and Dearborn. Later they occupied space for a time in the Trude building, and eighteen years ago moved to the Mallers building. When the first Wrigley unit was built they became the first tenants. They will be the first office tenants in the new Palmolive tower.

Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1930

Daniel M. Lord, founder of the advertising firm of Lord & Thomas & Logan and a pioneer Chicagoan of the era of Marshall Field and Potter Palmer, died yesterday in New York City at the age of 86. The body will be brought here for burial at Oakwoods cemetery, arriving tomorrow morning on the Twentieth Century.Services will be conducted in the cemetery chapel at noon.

Mr. Lord had lived in New York City since 1916. He retired from the firm in 1904, disposing of his interests to C. R. Irwin. D. L Taylor. and Albert D. Lasker, now chairman of the board and president.

Surviving him are two sons, Arthur D. Lord, a New York broker; Daniel M. Lord,Jr., with Halsey Stuart & Co., and two daughters, Mrs. Alice Lord Parsons and Mrs. Florence Lord Hough.

Starts Business “on Faith.”
Mr. Lord. who came to Chicago as a farmer boy from Long Island, N. Y., in 1870, lived to see the business he established on “faith and a shoestring” become an international agency placing a volume of advertising in excess of $20,000,000 annually.

His carer here began with the Interior, a Presbyterian paper, started shortly before the fire. It later became the Continent. Soliciting for it, Mr. Lord met many prominent Chicagoans. He used to recall that Alfred Cowles Sr., when business manager of The Tribune, told him in the ’70’s that “If The Tribune ever places an advertising solicitor on the street its death knell will be rung.”

In his early days as president of Lord & Thomas he placed much of the advertising for Palmer, Field & Leiter and as illustrative of the conservatism then, he would cite the fact that the largest ads were not more than six or seven inches deep.

Memory of Early Days.
His memories of early Chicago were rich in personal lore. After the fire he had offices in the Lind’s block at the east end of the Randolph street bridge. Carter Harrison. the elder, had desk room with him. Mr. Lord never forgot Mr. Harrison’s method of enjoying a short rest at luncheon time. He would take a billiard ball out of a drawer, place it in the palm of his hand and lie down on a lounge. As soon as he had completely relaxed the ball would fall to the floor. That would be the signal his rest was over.

For thirty years, until Mrs. Lord died, Mr. Lord lived at 5450 Cornell avenue. He then moved to the Chicago Athletic association, in which he was an active leader and once served as president. He was also a member of the Union League club.

He was deeply interested in philanthropic work, and contributed to the United Charities.

Plans for Retirement.
In announcing his retirement from Lord & Thomas on his 60th birthday, Mr. Lord revealed he had made up his mind to do that 25 years before.

“I counted on having a certain amount of money at that time,” he explained, “I have it. Any man can do the same. It matters not whether he is making $1,000 or $100,000 a year when he begins. If he knows what to do with his money he can quit at 60 This nation will be better off when it becomes the custom for its business men to retire while they are still ‘young old men.'”

Mr. Lord was born in Newton Corners, just outside Boston. He obtained his original capital in the shipping business during the civil war.

National Hotel Reporter, June 28, 1932

Effective July 1, the name of Lord & Thomas and Logan, 919 N. Michigan avenue, will revert to Lord & Thomas, the name used by this organization continuously for 54 years after its establishment. This name was changed to Lord & Thomas and Logan, July 1, 1926, when Lord & Thomas and Thomas F. Logan, Inc., were consolidated. Mr.Logan died August 9, 1928; subsequently his associates in the former Thomas F. Logan, Inc., retired from Lord & Thomas and Logan hence the return to the original name, Lord & Thomas.

Chicago Tribune, December 29, 1942

By Leland Forrester
Two names famous in advertising—those of Albert D. Lasker and the firm of Lord & Thomas—at the end of the year will disappear together from the field in which they have been linked for 44 years.

Lasker will retire and his firm will be dissolved, he announced last night in Chicago. He is president and principal owner of Lord & Thomas, the Chicago founded agency which gave him a job at $10 a week-in 1898, when he was 18. The agency, organized 70 years ago, is one of the oldest and largest in the world.

Will Operate Under New Name.
It will not have a successor, as such, but Lasker’s associates will operate as advertising agents under the name of Foote, Cone & Belding, using the present firm’s Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco quarters and retaining the same personnel. The new firm will take its name from Emerson Foote, Fairfax M. Cone, and Don Belding, who have been executive vice president of Lord & Thomas in charge, respectively, of the New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles offices.

Lasker, who owned Lord & Thomas 12 years after he started to work for it and soon became a multimillionaire as the exponent of “salesmanship in print,” is retiring for a second time still optimistic about the prospects for advertising, which he regards as a part of the American way of living. He` said:

Brands to Revive After War.
During the war we may have some nameless ‘victory’ brands, but, after the war the free selection principle of advertising will flourish. It will flourish because, thru the mass production which it brings, and the better products It makes possible’ the public gets better things at lowers prices, the new day economists to the contrary notwithstanding.

He said he based his optimistic view of advertising’s future on his firm’s experience in Canada and England since the war started.

Regarding Lasker’s decision to abolish the firm name of Lord & Thomas, an associate said:

A. D. Lacker and Lord & Thomas are synonymous. Lord & Thomas cannot be Lord & Thomas without Lasker.

Averages 30 Millions.

The agency has placed more than 750 million dollars of advertising since Lasker entered it, and has placed an average of more than 30 millions . a year in the last six years, the announcement said. Lasker retired in 1938, and was succeeded as president by Don Francisco. Last year, when Francisco and other key officers .resigned to take wartime government or military posts, Lasker returned to active man-agement. “Finding these activities prevented his taking such part in matters of public Interest during these trying times as his experience and back ground warranted, Mr.

Lasker decided on the action now taken that he might free his time to devote himself to public affairs,” the an nouncement said. Assistant G. O. P. Chairman.

Lasker was assistant chairman of the Republican national committee from 1918 to 1920, and chairman of the United States , shipping board from 1921 to 1923. He lived in Chicago until he re sumed active charge of the firm last year, when he moved to New York. He recently gave his 3 million dollar Lake Forest estate to the University of Chicago, to which he also has contributed 12 million dollars. He has made other contributions for use in the fields of medicine, education, and Jewish charities..

Atlanta Journal, January 3, 1943

NEW YORK, Jan. 2.—Discontinuance of Lord & Thomas, one of the largest and oldest advertising agencies in the world, is announced by Albert D. Lasker, principal owner, president and director, who is retiring from the field of advertising of which he was one of the outstanding pioneers.

Under the name of Foote, Cone and Belding, Lasker’s former associates will operate as advertising agents in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, occupying the same quarters and retaining the same personnel. Emerson Foote, Fairfax M. Cone and Don Belding have been the executive vice presidents in charge of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles offices, respectively, of Lord & Thomas.

Complete Action
Liquidation of Lord & Thomas completes a course of action determined by Lasker in 1938. In August of that year, he retired as president and director to devote his entire attention to public affairs.

However, the successive withdrawals of Don Francisco, president, who became one of the chiefs of the Office of Co-ordnator of Inter-American Affairs; Edward Masker, general manager, who enlisted for active service as an officer in the U. S. Navy, and L. M. Masius, Jew York manager, who left to serve as major abroad in the Army, compelled Mr. Lasker return to the active management of Lord 6c Thomas early this year.

Lasker, finding these activities prevented his taking such part in matters of public interest during these trying times as his experience and background warranted, decided on the action now taken that he might free his time to devote himself to public affairs. With Laskers dissolution of the business he had owned and operated for so many years, the name Lord 6c Thomas will disappear. A. D.

Lasker and Lord & Thomas are synonymous, a former associate stated. Lord & Thomas cannot be Lord & Thomas without Mr. Lasker.

Lasker Leads
American advertising, as it is constituted today, owes much to the vision and judgment of Lasker. it was under Lasker that the then, revolutionary conception of advertising as salesmanship in print was established in 1908.

Lasker was the foremost advertising pioneer in the use of radio as an advertising medium. He was the first to have scientific copy and product tests.

Lasker’s ability to “feel the pulse” of the public, and anticipate changing needs before they were obvious, made his business advice highly sought and valued in other fields. He conceived and financed many projects all designed to create new and better ways of living.

During Lasker’s connection with Lord & Thomas, the firm has placed more than $750,000,000 worth of advertising, averaging over $30,000,000 annually for the past six years.

Lord & Thomas has been in business continuously for 70 years. It was incorporated in Chicago in 1872 by Daniel M. Lord and Ambrose I. Thomas.

Lasker was employed by Lord & Thomas in 1898. At that time it was one of the three largest advertising agencies in the nation, despite the fact that its annual billings totaled only $800,000. his starting salary was $10 a week.

Sole Owner
In 1910 Lasker became sole owner of Lord 6c Thomas when he took over the interests of Charles R. Erwin, with whom he had been in partnership since the death of Thomas six years before. Lord had retired in 1904.

From 1918 to 1920 Lasker took a leave of absence from his advertising activities to become assistant chairman of the Republican National Committee, and from 1921 to 1923, to be chairman of the United States Shipping Board.

In 1926, Lord & Thomas was merged by Lasker with Thomas F. Logan, Inc., and the firm was known as Lord & Thomas and Logan until after Logan’s death in 1928 when it reverted to the original name.

Lasker’s ability to not only analyze preferences of the public, but their future dictates and translate these into advertising policy, has affected the entire mode of living of Americans. His introduction of “salesmanship in print” resulted in new and better ways of living for everyone.

New Industries
New industries started, old ones developed as effects of the change in advertising were felt New social consciousness became a byproduct.

Before “salesmanship in print” was brought to life by Lasker, values and productiveness were intangible, unknown quantities, with potentialities largely unexplored. Intelligent mass education of the public soon changed all this.

Lasker was the first advertising counsel for cooked canned foods. He handled the first national advertising for automobile tires, and was the first to use double-page spreads in magazines other than the center pages.

Firm Retained.
His firm was retained, at its inception, to publicize the first product to be advertised by a farm cooperative—Sunkist oranges and lemons.

In the field of radio, during the first four years of radio chain operation, Lord & Thomas placed more than 39 per cent of the entire advertising placed nationally on the air.

Lord & Thomas introduced to sponsored time such well-known programs as the Hit Parade, Cities Service Hour, The Goldbergs, Mr. District Attorney and Mary Marlin, which was the pattern lor many daytime serials which followed.

The clients of Lord & Thomas are:

California Fruit Growers Exchange, Commercial National Bank & Trust Company of New York, Commonwealth Edison Company, Delmonte Properties Company, Finance Com., Milk Fund, First National Bank of Chicago, Frigidaire Division, General Motors Corporation, J. A. Folger & Company, Illinois Northern Utilities Company, International Cellucotton Products Company, Kimberly-Clark Corporation.

Lindsay Ripe Olive Company, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Lockheed Air Terminal, Luxor Ltd., M. & M. Ltd., Menasco Manufacturing Company, National Broadcasting Company, New York Central System, Montgomery Ward & Company, Owl Drug Company, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, Prune Proration Zone No. 1, Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company, Public Service of Northern Illinois, Pepsodent Company, Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Company, Purex Corporation, Ltd.

RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., Roos Brothers, Safeway, Schenley Distillers Corporation, Security First National Bank of Los Angeles Shaler Food Products Company, Southern Pacific Company, Sun Maid Raisin Growers Association, Sunnyvale Packing Company Swerl Products Company, Tide Water Associated Oil Company, Inc., Vega Airplane Company and Western United Gas & Electric.

Lasker Always Has Time To “Help Out” Others
Despite the fact that he was engaged in that most exacting of modern American businesses advertising building up one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, Albert D. Lasker has al ways made time and found energy to devote to helping others.

He was never too busy to serve his nation when the need arose.

The fields of medicine and education, Jewish charities and Jewish social problems all have been materially aided by Lasker funds and guided by the keen Lasker vision and perception which carried him from a $10 per week job into the foremost ranks of self-made American successes. Lasker contributed $1,200,000 to the University of Chicago.
He recently gave his famous estate at Lake Forest, Ill., on which more than $3,000,000 had been spent, to the same institution. Both he and Mrs. Lasker have given largely to the support of the Planned Parenthood Federation.

Contributes $50,000
Some years ago Lasker and his sisters contributed $50,000 to the cancer institute its first large contribution.

His activity and benefactions on behalf of Jewish and local affairs in Chicago were so great and varied that he became, in a sense, known as inheritor of the mantle of the late Chicago philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald, head of Sears Roebuck & Co.

During the last war, during the Wilson administration, the then Secretary of Agriculture Houston appointed Mr. Lasker assistant secretary in charge of a vast campaign for home grown vegetables and canning.

When a man of highly successful and experienced background was needed to act as liquidator of the more than three billions of dollars worth of Government war investments held by the U. S. Shipping Board, Lasker was called upon by the Government to rfet as chairman of the board. He fulfilled his difficult duties with honor to himself and gain to the nation from 1921 to 1923.

Lasker always retained that native American characteristic love of sports. His feeling for the national diamond sport, baseball, is understandable. Lasker started life as a baseball reporter. With William Wrigley Jr., for year he controlled the Chicago Cubs.

In 1920, after the White Sox baseball scandal, he conceived the reorganization of baseball that was necessary, and devised what was then known as the “Lasker Plan.” As part of the “Lasker Plan” Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis became baseball czar, and the sport has never suffered from tinge of scandal since.

His other sport was golf. It was under Lasker’s direction that the first public 18-hole golf course with grass greens was constructed in Pasadena, Cal. This public course, open to the general public, was an outgrowth of Lasker’s interest in golf “architecture” and devotion to bettering conditions for the average man and woman.

Laid Out Course
In later years, when he built his Lake Forest estate, Lasker laid out a model 18-hole championship course there. Such authorities as Gene Sarazen and Bobby Jones rated it as among the best six test courses in the United States.

Lasker was delegate at large from Illinois to the Republican national convention in 1936. In 1940, he was a delegate to the Republican national convention which nominated Wendell Willkie. Lasker was an ardent Willkie leader during this convention.

Lasker was born in 1880, the son of American parents, who were touring Europe at the time. He was raised in Galveston, Texas.

Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1952

Albert Davis Lasker, a former Chicagoan, one of the nation’s outstanding advertising executives, a philanthropist and former chairman of the United States shipping board, died yesterday in New York City. He was 72.

Mr. Lasker died of cancer in Harkness pavilion at Columbia-Presbyterian medical center. He had contributed thousands of dollars to cancer research and, thru liberal donations to the Lasker Foundation at the University of Chicago, financed study and research in the field of degenerative diseases and birth control.

Began Working at 15
Mr. Lasker, who pioneered modern advertising methods, was born in Freiberg, Germany, in 1880 of American parents traveling in Europe. He was reared in Galveston, Tex., and began his working career at 13, later becoming a reporter on the Galveston News and the Dallas News.

In 1898 he came to Chicago to work at $10 a week with the advertising firm of Lord and Thomas. Twelve years later he owned the business. One of his outstanding advertising feats was to sell the public on canned condensed milk

It was Mr. Lasker who showed industry how to enjoy tremendous sales increases by trebling their advertising budgets.

In his career with Lord and Thomas, the firm placed more than 730 million dollars worth of advertising and became one of the largest and wealthiest agencies He liquidated the company upon his retirement from active business in December, 1942.

Once Part Owner of Cubs
Mr. Lasker once was part owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team and took an active part in the re organization of baseball following the Black Sox scandal of 1919. This was completed with the appointment of Judge Kenesaw Landis as baseball commissioner. Mr. Lasker later sold his holdings in the Cubs to William Wrigley.

Mr.Lasker, an early golf enthusiast, helped established the first public courses with ” grass greens ” to promote scientific put ting. These were in Pasadena, Cal. Similar greens later were in stalled on courses thruout the country.

He built an 18 hole golf course on his Mill road estate in Lake Forest, a fabulous $3,500,000 farm which he donated to the Univer sity of Chicago in 1939 for recrea tional purposes as well as research. The estate is noted for its beautiful gardens, pools, hiking- trails, and wooded areas. In its center is a 50 room French manor house.

Held Federal Posts
A Republican, Mr. Lasker held office under both Republican and Democratic Presidents. He was assistant secretary of agriculture under Woodrow Wilson and was appointed head of the shipping board by Warren G. Harding.

From 1918 to 1920 he was assist ant chairman of the Republican national committee. In 1940 he was Wendell Willkie’s floor leader in the Illinois delegation to the G. O. P. national convention. He was a University of Chicago trustee from 1937 to 1942 and for several years resided in an 18 room mansion at Burton pl. and Dearborn pkwy. The building later was sold and converted into an apartment dwelling.

Mr. Lasker long was active in Jewish affairs, serving as director of the Jewish Charities of Chicago and as a member of the executive board of the American Jewish committee.

He and his brothers and sisters gave a building to the National Farm school and Junior college in Bucks county, Pa., in memory of their father, who was interested in the progress of Jews in agriculture.

Married Three Times
Mr. Lasker was married three times. In 1902 he was wed to Flora Warner of Buffalo, N. Y., who died in 1936.

They had two daughters and a son, Mrs. Leigh B. Block, Edward Lasker, and Mrs. Sidney F. Brody, all of whom survive him.

His second marriage, to Doris Kenyon Sills Hopkins, a screen actress, ended in a divorce in 1939 in less than six months. His third wife, the former Mrs. Mary Woodard Reinhardt, whom he married in 1940, also survives. Private funeral services will be held tomorrow in the Lasker residence at 29 Beekman pl., in New York City.

Fortune, September 17, 2010

How the real Don Draper sold Lucky Strikes

By Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz
In an excerpt from “The Man Who Sold America” authors Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz explain how Albert Lasker, an enigmatic ad man, invented many of the tactics still used in advertising today. Here, in what served as inspiration for Don Draper’s character in the AMC series “Mad Men,” Lasker convinces his client American Tobacco to focus their ad budget on one brand—Lucky Strike—and to play up the benefits of the industry-wide practice of “toasting” tobacco.

Lord & Thomas’s first piece of advice to American Tobacco must have come as a surprise: Stop advertising most of your brands.

Lasker argued that rather than maintaining many modestly successful small brands, the company needed to create one overwhelmingly powerful product that could compete with Camels and Chesterfields. Lasker recalled saying:

These other cigarettes and other products were a different type of goods . . . Instead of spending a little money and a moderate amount of money on each of these fifty products, milk them all. Take what you spend on them and the milking of their profits and put it in a big push behind Luckies.

George Washington Hill, son of American Tobacco CEO Percival Hill, and entrusted with managing the Lucky Strike brand. agreed. As a result, the money formerly spent advertising Blue Boar—the original Lord & Thomas account—and most of the other minor American Tobacco products was diverted to support Lucky Strike.

The first Lord & Thomas campaign on behalf of the now-favored brand built upon the earlier concept of “toasting,” which attempted to differentiate Luckies based on the preparation of the tobacco. The copy stressed the unique benefits of toasting, including improved flavor and reduced acidity, supposedly making it easier on the throat. It was classic Claude Hopkins (a Lasker protegé who later became chairman of Lord & Thomas): true, the tobacco used in Lucky Strikes was heated to somewhere between 260 and 300 degrees during the manufacturing process—but this was common practice in cigarette manufacturing.

From Toasted to Precious Voice
The brand still wasn’t doing well enough to satisfy the hugely ambitious Hill, so in 1927, Lord & Thomas began complementing the Toasted theme with a series of advertisements that became known as the Precious Voice campaign. This new campaign argued that, in addition to making cigarettes easier on the throat, the vaunted toasting process actually helped protect the throat and voice.

One thing that distinguished Precious Voice was its target audience. At that time, the social stigma against women smoking was still powerful. Although Philip Morris had introduced the first women’s cigarette in 1924 (claiming that it was “mild as May”), few women smoked openly, and most restaurants and other public places prohibited smoking by women.

But women were beginning to smoke in the home, and Lasker realized that a vast new market was ready to open up. This was brought home to him one afternoon at the Tip Top Inn, a restaurant near his Chicago home, where he was lunching with his wife. Flora tended toward obesity, and her doctor had suggested that she take up smoking to curb her appetite. But on this particular day, when she attempted to light up after lunch, the restaurant’s proprietor rushed over and said that he could not permit a woman to smoke in the main dining room. If Flora wished to smoke, he continued, the Laskers would have to retire to a private room.

“It filled me with indignation,” Lasker recalled, “that I had to do surreptitiously something which was perfectly normal in a place where I had gone so much. That determined me to break down the prejudice against women smoking.”

No doubt the prospect of doubling the potential market for Luckies also influenced his thinking. Lasker took his idea to George Washington Hill, and told him that if American Tobacco acted decisively, the women’s market might be theirs for the asking.

Precious Voice—one of the few postwar campaigns that was largely conceived and directed by (the aging) Lasker—grew directly out of this decision. Lasker decided that testimonials from well-respected foreign women might start to overcome the prejudice against women smokers, and he started with opera singers. “It was very natural that my mind went to the opera stars,” he explained, “because at that time there were only one or two American stars, and the rest were foreign. And if I (could) get the women of the opera, it (wouldn’t) be long until (I’d) be able to get the women of the stage.”

The subtext, of course, was that women—sophisticated, worldly, even exotic women—who earned their livelihood by singing were willing to trust their precious voices to Luckies.

Precious Voice was one of the first Lord & Thomas advertising campaigns to rely heavily on testimonials, and very quickly, the campaign expanded to include almost all the stars of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Just as Lasker had anticipated, stage and screen stars (both women and men) also rushed to join the chorus of artists praising Luckies. Incredibly, none of the individuals testifying for Luckies were paid for their contributions; they considered the free publicity compensation enough.

The campaign enjoyed immediate success. “Overnight,” Lasker later boasted, “the business of Luckies went up like the land in a boom field where oil has just been found.”

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpt from The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (But True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker. Copyright 2010 Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz. All rights reserved.

Though New York is the epicenter of American media, Chicago cemented a leading role in advertising more than a century ago, thanks to the success of hometown catalog companies Sears Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward & Co. As industries from canned food to clothing began creating mass-produced goods, manufacturers, catalogers and retailers such as Marshall Field’s scrambled to lure buyers with snappy text and appealing drawings.

The city’s agency roots date to 1881, when Daniel Lord and Ambrose Thomas formed Lord & Thomas in the Loop. The firm eventually became Foote Cone & Belding, a predecessor of today’s DraftFCB. Crain’s sister publication Advertising Age was founded here in 1930.

Even though it lacked the glamour of Madison Avenue, Chicago’s ad world factored significantly in the industry’s creative revolution of the 1950s and ’60s. A middle-aged, bespectacled Michigan native in perpetually wrinkled suits, Leo Burnett didn’t look like the hip art directors and copywriters flooding New York, but he churned out icons including the Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Doughboy and, most famously, the Marlboro Man.

This was advertising’s golden age. Television was coming into its own, and consumers were cheerfully opening their wallets. Advertising dramatically influenced consumption habits: Philip Morris & Co. sales skyrocketed from $282.8 million in 1954, before Mr. Burnett’s ads went national, to $386.2 million.

That creative revolution was followed by a structural upheaval in the 1970s and ’80s. During a protracted economic slump, large agencies snapped up smaller shops and began to expand abroad. The eight major U.S. shops then merged into larger, often foreign-owned entities. By the mid-’80s, the industry was dominated by a handful of large public holding companies, four of which remain: Paris-based Publicis Groupe, London-based WPP PLC, New York’s O

Lord & Thomas

One Chicago ad agency—Lord & Thomas—overshadowed all the rest, achieving greater national influence and notoriety than any other agency in the United States. Albert Lasker started at Lord & Thomas as a floor sweeper. In 1904, became general manager at a salary of $52,000 per year, and within a decade owned the agency. Preaching that advertising was “salesmanship in print,” he clarified client account/creative partnerships, held firmly to the 15% commission, financed some campaigns for clients, scorned research and trained many future agency leaders.

Lasker drove L&T to No. 1 rank, left in 1921 to serve in Washington, returned to a faltering agency in 1923, ruthlessly revived it, built Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s Kotex and Kleenex businesses and created Lucky Strike cigarette ads aimed at women. In 1942, he sold his L&T holdings so that the shop could reopen—in January 1943—carrying the name of the key executives in the agency’s New York, Chicago and Los Angeles offices—Foote, Cone & Belding.

He traveled the city in a yellow chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce and maintained a suburban estate with a staff of 50. Lasker hired the best copywriters in the business and taught them that advertising was “salesmanship in print”—probably the best-known definition of the advertising business in twentieth-century America.

Lasker sold the public on the idea of orange juice (people previously only ate oranges), built brands such as Goodyear and Van de Kamps, established a “records of results” department that monitored its clients’ advertising impact with catalog-response precision, and even used advertising to help defeat Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. Advertising legend David Ogilvy rightly ranked Lasker as one of the “six giants of modern advertising.”

Claude C. Hopkins

Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1932

Claude C. Hopkins, formerly president of the Lord & Thomas Advertising agency, who developed the advertising of various famous products, died last night of heart disease at his country estate at Spring Lake, near Grand Haven, Mich.

Mr. Hopkin was born near Spring Lake in 1866. He entered the advertising business in Grand Rapids in 1885 and later came to Chicago, where he became the advertising manager of Swift & Co., packers. He joined the Lord & Thomas agency and for a time was its president, personally writing many of the advertisements for nationally known products, among them Goodyear tires, Palmolive soap, Pepsodent toothpaste, Quaker oats, and many others. In his day he was considered the highest salaried advertising writer in America.

He retired from the agency ten years ago and moved to his Spring Lake home. He completed there an autobiography, My Life In Advertising. He was known as a student of the arts. He was the author of Scientific Advertising, which was translated into fourteen languages.

Mr.Hopkins widow and a daughter survive him..

The most legendary American advertising copywriter was Lord & Thomas’s Claude C. Hopkins. In his popular autobiography, My Life in Advertising (1927), Hopkins captured the populist style of Chicago advertising as literature for the common people. Hopkins is probably the father of consumer advertising for branded goods. He dubbed Schlitz the “beer that made Milwaukee famous,” created unparalleled brand equity for Palmolive soap and Pepsodent toothpaste, wrote the “shot from guns” slogan for Quaker Oats, and invented free product sampling through print coupons. Hopkins penned the most influential book ever written about advertising—Scientific Advertising (1923). s one of the greatest copywriters in the history of advertising, Claude C. Hopkins made a lasting impact on the way advertising is created. At the same time he brought great success to his clients and earned himself an unparalleled salary of $185,000 a year, in 1907!

He wrote one advertisement for Van Camp Evaporated Milk that caused more than 1.46 million coupons to be redeemed. By learning the science of brewing beer, Hopkins was able to create a campaign that lifted Schlitz Beer from fifth place to a tie with Budweiser for first.

In 1908, Claude Hopkins created the first “clip-coupon” advertisement which, with a special code in the coupon (CIO = Chicago Inter Ocean; CST = Chicago Sunday Tribune), returned effectiveness of the newspaper.

Lord & Thomas and Lasker blazed an impressive track record. They were responsible for branding the California orange crop and creating Sunkist, a more marketable product since oranges now had a name that could be promoted. The agency also promoted the invention of the juice machine and subsequent popularization of orange juice as a daily morning beverage. It also worked similar magic with raisins (Sun-Maid) and took Lucky Strike, an obscure cigarette brand, and made it a top seller.

An early proponent of radio advertising, the company sponsored the infamously hilarious minstrel comedy, “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” and later picked a relatively obscure wisecracking comedian to star in a show sponsored by Pepsodent, a toothpaste client. Thus was Bob Hope’s career launched. Lord & Thomas also broke ground by first advertising a product whose purpose was deemed unmentionable — Kotex sanitary napkins.

As a window to an earlier era, and a source of insights into the commercial and cultural origins of the advertising industry (and one of its guiding lights), this portrait of Lasker is a worthy contribution.

Lasker sold Lord & Thomas in 1942 to three employees (Messrs. Foote, Cone & Belding). Fairfax Cone led the new company into an unparalleled era of creative broadcast advertising. The agency built some of the most successful broadcast advertising brands of all time, including the “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” Clairol’s “Does she or doesn’t she?” and Dial soap’s “Aren’t you glad you use Dial?” Cone’s client-sponsored broadcast programs helped make superstars out of such performers as Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope. Cone also led the Chicago advertising industry into public philanthropy, supporting the University of Chicago, opera, and many other endeavors.

NOTES

¹ Lasker was the early guiding force for the Cubs and even baseball. Among his contributions:

Wrigley Field

1919 World Series

How the real Don Draper sold Lucky Strikes

Lord & Thomas

Claude C. Hopkins

NOTES

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