Advertising: New Boss for the Biggest

In its 104 years of existence, J. Walter Thompson Co., the world's largest advertising agency, has had exactly three chief executives—J. Walter Thompson, Stanley Resor and Norman H. Strouse. Last week Thompson's board of directors elected a fourth. Strouse, who has held the job for seven years, will retain his title of chairman, but he will give up day-to-day details to devote himself to long-range planning and industry speechmaking. Succeeding him as boss of the biggest: broad-shouldered Dan Seymour, 53, who has been JWT's president for the past three years.

Martian Invaders. Seymour's election was noteworthy in another sense. Traditionally, ad-agency heads have come, as did Strouse, from the ranks of account executives. But Seymour emerged from the world of radio-TV, and had already had a successful 15-year career as performer, producer and director before he switched. He began as a radio announcer in Boston after graduation from Amherst ('35), soon moved to New York and network broadcasting. Seymour was the announcer who, in Orson Welles's famous 1938 radio drama, "War of the Worlds," terrified listeners with realistic bulletins on Martian invaders. Until World War II, he was the Danny who used to visit soap opera's Aunt Jenny to listen to her sudsy tales of goodness. He was also the producer and M.C. of We the People, produced the wartime radio series Now It Can Be Told; when television arrived, he and We the People went video.

In 1950, he went over to Madison Avenue. For five years he was with Young & Rubicam, selecting shows to suit the sponsors. In 1955 he moved to Thompson, which, in spite of its size, had been slow getting into the enormous new field of TV. Seymour reorganized the radio-TV department, was the agency's show shopper. He did so well that he soon had a hand in all of the agency's activities. Thus, after Stanley Resor died and Strouse was left alone to run the shop, Seymour was a natural choice for president.

Globe-Girdling. "I suppose," says Seymour of his rise and latest honor, that "my being chosen is a reflection of the change in the advertising business. With radio and television becoming so important, there is a greater chance for people experienced in these fields to rise to the top." Seymour's top is a pretty lofty place. J. Walter Thompson has worldwide billings of $558 million, and its list of clients reads like a blue book: Ford Motors, Liggett & Myers, RCA, Pan American, Eastman Kodak, Irving Trust Co., Scott Paper, Kraft Foods. So solid is the agency's work that some clients have been with it for generations. Libby, McNeill & Libby has been a customer since 1897, and Lever Bros, appeared in 1902.

Many of Thompson's clients have gone or are going global, and J. Walter Thompson is globe-girdling with them. The agency has offices in 26 countries, gets 36% of its billings from abroad. But overseas advertising has a still greater potential and one Seymour assignment will be to realize it. Another task is as old as the business, and Seymour states it simply: "To make sure that our advertising sells goods."