Advertising: The Mammoth Mirror

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On the Avenue. Debate about advertising is not new to the U.S. At one time or another, virtually every American of consequence has passed judgment on the industry. The late Fred Allen jeered: "An advertising agency is 85% confusion and 15% commission." In 1931 F.D.R. surprisingly confessed: "If I were starting life over again, I would probably give first thought to making advertising my career . . . because it combines real imagination with a deep study of psychology.'' But today. Americans talk about advertising more than ever because it has woven itself inextricably into the texture of their everyday lives. The first songs sung by today's toddlers are less apt to be nursery rhymes than mesmeric radio and TV jingles. Millions of Americans might have trouble identifying Ernest Hemingway, but it would be hard to find one who does not know what to order for The Pause That Refreshes.

Familiar as they are with its products, millions of Americans also tend to assume that they know all about the advertising business. Moviegoers have a clear impression of the nature of life on Madison Avenue: it is a combination of Sydney Greenstreet bullying Clark Gable in The Hucksters and Rock Hudson seducing Doris Day in Lover Come Back. In the public mind, the advertising business is firmly established as a grey-flannel world of three-Gibson lunches, three-button jackets, unabashed throat slicing and zany argot ("Let's smear some of this on the cat and see if she licks it off").

But the cat is not really like that. To do the job that otherwise would require millions of salesmen, the U.S. has spawned more than 500 advertising agencies of some size and stature. The backbone of the business consists of the 42 major agencies that have billings* of more than $25 million a year. These are the agencies that create the ads for the nation's major corporations and that, consciously or unconsciously, people refer to when they speak of "Madison Avenue."

Contrary to legend, the top U.S. agencies are just as diverse in character and outlook as 42 individual salesmen would be. Only 25 of them are headquartered in Manhattan, and only seven actually have offices on Madison Avenue. Some are the lengthened shadow of one man: Manhattan's research-minded Interpublic Inc. pursues the sociological bent of indefatigable Marion Harper, a complex Ivy Leaguer, while Chicago's Leo Burnett Co. reflects the down-to-earth outlook of Founder Burnett, a Michigan small-town boy who once worked as an $18-a-week reporter for the Peoria Journal. Other agencies, such as New York's J. Walter Thompson and Philadelphia's N. W. Ayer & Son, are true corporate enterprises, scarcely different in spirit from General Motors or Procter & Gamble. Among them, the top agencies employ almost as many different techniques of advertising as they do receptionists.