The James Walter Thompson Company, or J. Walter Thompson, as it is popularly known, opened its doors in New York in December of 1864. The Chicago office, the advertising agency's second, opened almost thirty years later, in 1891. Interest in international advertising opportunities emerged quickly. Shortly after the Spanish-American War, a Spanish department was organized in the New York office to prepare advertisements for placement in Latin America and the Philippines. The company opened a small London office in 1899, followed by a fully staffed London operation in 1919. In an atmosphere of expanding foreign trade, J. Walter Thompson's subsequent international buildup was rapid: by 1923, the company had set up direct representation in six European countries "to insure minimum rates from the publications and copy that was not only right in appeal but correct in native idiom as well."26 American trade had grown in those areas, and the company published its Thompson Blue Book of Advertising in order to encourage manufacturers to consider either exporting new or established products or opening manufacturing facilities directly in foreign locations.27 As one early-twentieth-century advertiser put it succinctly, "All over the world, people can be educated, and are daily being educated, to want more and more of the things which their ancestors never even dreamed of possessing."28
In 1927, the growth of J. Walter Thompson's international organization was given tremendous impetus when the General Motors Corporation signed on as a global client. The advertising agency agreed to open offices wherever GM established a plant; in return it was assured exclusive representation of General Motors vehicles in those locations. This mutually beneficial relationship ensured the growth of both automobile manufacturing and advertising in the 1920s and 1930s, enabling American symbols of consumption in everyday life to be carried to areas further and further removed from New York or Chicago. A 1927 company newsletter claimed that, thanks to the efforts of the two companies, "the four corners of the earth can tell a Chevrolet from a Ford."29 In 1927 alone, J. Walter Thompson opened six new European offices, and American managers moved overseas to organize and expand operations.30 As the company history relates, "The next four years saw a continuing expansion of Thompson's overseas coverage. Offices were opened in South Africa, India, Canada, Australia, Japan, and South America."31 The company's relationship, first with General Motors and then with other global manufacturers and service providers, proved fruitful: J. Walter Thompson experienced rapid growth and encountered only one small downturn during the Depression; during World War II, the agency underwent a larger downturn, forcing it to close the doors on all its European offices. Toward the end of the war, however, the company again expanded by opening new offices in Latin America, India, and South Africa, and after the war four of the European offices reopened.32 These statistics are remarkable in their testimony: Despite the Great Depression and significant threats to globalization from increased tariffs and other trade barriers, decreases in immigration, war, and general business unrest, global advertising had claimed a lasting place in the world economy.
J. Walter Thompson entered the global stage in the early twentieth century and, with incredible insight and reach, helped facilitate the earth-spanning activities that mark globalization |
The J. Walter Thompson headquarters in New York provided promotional material about its international operations, revealing the pride with which headquarters witnessed the company's growth over the years. The South African office, for example, started out as a "four-man show" in Port Elizabeth in 1928, with one account. Its global efforts were not hampered by subsequent downturns in the international economy. By 1951, J. Walter Thompson was the top advertising agency in South Africa, with four offices and nearly 100 employees.33 When J. Walter Thompson claimed in 1948 that the company office in Johannesburg, South Africa, was the only one in which "gold blows in through the windows," savvy readers understood that the reference was not simply to the gold dust from nearby mines.34
In 1928, company president Stanley Resor wrote an introduction to a foreign issue of the company's news bulletin. As he described it, the foreign offices ran under the supervision of American managers but were staffed largely with native personnel. Each office handled its own copy work, and advertising prepared in the international offices had, by 1928, appeared in twenty-six languages in publications circulated in over forty countries.35 The international report for 1928 indicated that the foreign offices handled twenty-nine accounts, thirteen on their own, with minimal support from the United States. The volume of business for 1928 was expected to double that for 1927 and achieve more than thirty times the output of 1921. By 1930, the company listed thirty-four branch offices, located in Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, India, Australia, and South America.36
This brief business history explores the rapidity with which a national organization like J. Walter Thompson could internationalize operations. Advertisers and manufacturers alike took some risks and reaped enormous profits, and their mutually beneficial relationship propelled the United States to dominance in the world market. Although export sales were only about 12 percent of domestic sales in 1929, they were significant economically and symbolically, as they suggested both future directions for business and the preeminent role the United States would come to play. One research report put it this way:
Remember that the reason American business has met with such unprecedented success in export is primarily due to the ability of these American advertisers to see through so-called international obstacles. American methods of merchandising have been used; scientific market research (a purely American science), American aggressiveness, and American advertising methods sensibly adapted in language and illustration to the customs of each people, have all played an important role in the absorbing business of successful export. 37
Lucrative markets in Latin America for General Motors and J. Walter Thompson
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay provided lucrative markets for General Motors and hence for J. Walter Thompson. By 1928, these three countries accounted for 87 percent of total sales of American automobiles in South America, and automobile sales factored significantly in the U.S. economy. By the end of the 1920s, automobiles accounted for 20 percent of U.S. steel production, 80 percent of the country's rubber production, and 75 percent of its plate-glass production.38 Automobile sales depended on getting the word out, and J. Walter Thompson was eager to claim its part in the process: "It may be said," one employee later reflected, "that the J. Walter Thompson Company, with its international organization, has done more to stimulate the production and consumption of goods and services throughout the world than any other company."39 There is, in fact, a great deal of truth to this argument, as the United States exported almost as many manufactured goods in 1910 as it had produced altogether in 1850.40 Global advertising proved a powerful tool for marketing those goods, and the link was increasingly strengthened through the active work of J. Walter Thompson.41
Notes:
26. "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3, Information Center, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives, Duke University Library.
27. "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 2.
28. A. L. Reinitz, "RESEARCH: The Approach to Export Advertising," Export Advertiser (Nov. 1929): 30.
29. Newsletter, 1 Nov. 1927, quoted in Jeffrey Merron, "American Culture Goes Abroad: J. Walter Thompson and the General Motors Export Account, 1927-1933" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991), 19. See also Merron, "Putting Foreign Consumers on the Map."
30. "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3.
31.Ibid. By 1928, the company had offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Antwerp, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Alexandria, and Port Elizabeth.
32. "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3-4.
33. "How Well Do You Know Your JWT'ers?" 2 Apr. 1951, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
34. "How Well Do You Know Your JWT'ers?" 18 Oct. 1948, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
35. Stanley Resor, "Introduction," News Bulletin, no. 135 (July 1928): 1-2, 3. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
36. "A Few Facts About Our Work Abroad," News Bulletin, no. 136 (Nov. 1928): 16-19, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
37. Reinitz, "RESEARCH: The Approach to Export Advertising," 30.
38. David Nye, Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 178.
39. "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 6.
4O. Ibid.,1.
41. Clement Watson expanded on this idea: "The development of American advertising methods abroad is going hand in hand with that of American export," wrote one employee. "The two are closely linked together in organization, in method, and in achievement, and American advertising practice is beginning to exert its influence abroad as markedly in its sphere as are American sales and merchandising in theirs." Clement H. Watson, "Markets are People-Not Places: A Few Thoughts on Export," News Bulletin, no. 135 (July 1928): 21.