Bruce Fairchild Barton (August 5, 1886 – July 5, 1967)    
" Advertising has been ‘voted’ for, and elected as the method by which people want to learn what to buy " (Barton and Lichtenberg, 1930)

Biography
     Bruce Barton spent his earliest years in Robbins, Tennessee, where he was born in August 5, 1886. He was the son of William E. Barton, a circuit riding preacher, and Esther T. (Bushnell) Barton, a schoolteacher. He received his high school diploma in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1903, where his family had moved. By that time, Barton had already showed his entrepreneurial capacity by selling maple syrup from his uncle’s farm earning $600 a year. He started university at Berea College in Kentucky from where he transferred to Amherst College. He graduated in 1907 with Phi Beta Kappa honors and was voted as the most likely to succeed in his class.

     Due to the severe recession that was whipping the country, after he finished college the only employment Barton could find was as timekeeper in a Montana railroad camp. A few months later he moved to Chicago where he was employed as managing editor by a small religious newspaper, the Home Herald, and later on by Housekeeper magazine, both of which failed shortly after he took the jobs.

     After his unpleasant work experiences in Chicago, he moved to New York becoming assistant sales manager for the popular Collier’s magazine where he first got in contact with mainstream print advertising.

     In 1913, Barton married Esther M. Randall with whom he had three children: Randall, Betsey Alice, and Bruce Jr. A year after his marriage he joined Every Week, a weekly magazine in the capacity of editor. There he wrote a weekly inspirational essay. During this same year he published his first book, More Power to You. In 1918 Barton was hired by Redbook to write editorials and in 1920 he published a collection of essays called It’s a Good Old World.

     During World War I Barton carried out a great deal of volunteer work for the United War Work Campaign. This fund-raising activity as well as being very successful brought him in contact with the two men, Roy Durstine and Alex Osborn, with whom he founded BDO. After merging with the George Batten Company, BDO would become one of the biggest ad agencies in the world.

     During the 1920s he combined a very brilliant career as chairman of the board for BBDO with a non less successful career as a religious writer. His most famous book was published in 1925. The Man Nobody Knows portrayed Jesus Christ as an advertising and a sales man. During the 20s, though, not everything was good for Barton. He felt very disenchanted with the values of the American society and especially with the norms and values of the advertising that was being done at that time. At the same time he went through a time of personal crisis trying to keep up with his two very demanding jobs. Finally in 1928, under very extreme pressures, not only from his work but also from his marriage he checked himself into a sanitarium in order to try to put his life together.

     After a family trip to the Far East where Barton tried to decide about his future, he went into politics, positioning himself in the hard wing of the Republicans, vehemently criticizing the Democrats, personified by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal.

     In 1936, he was elected to Congress, representing the affluent district of Manhattan, he was reelected for a second term, but his political career finished when he lost in the run for a Senate seat for the state of New York. After that he never run for an office again although he kept actively supporting the Republican Party for the 1940 elections.

     After the Democratic victory, he moved away from politics, and refocused himself in his advertising career in BBDO where he served as chairman of the board until 1961 when he retired.

     Until, his death in 1967, Barton kept himself busy by using his talent to support charitable and civic organizations as American Heart Association, the United Negro College Fund and many others.

The Advertising Man
     "I had never thought of advertising as a life work, though I had on the side, written some very successful copy" (Fox, p.104) This quote from Barton describes perfectly the way he saw advertising. Barton looked at advertising as job that would allow him to write free-lance articles and books, and also to gather enough money to pursue another career teaching, writing or in politics.

     However, Barton brought a strong creative influence to BBDO. Thanks to his talent building effective, creative advertising, based in great copy strength, BBDO become a powerhouse in advertising. In the first years of the agency, his reputation brought an impressive number of clients as General Motors, U.S. Steel, General Motors and Lever Brothers that came to BBDO attracted for the capacity of the agency, specially Barton, to create image-building campaigns and overall, effective advertising.

     Barton was a man that believed like no other in ethics and in the free enterprise system. He brought to the industry a sense of what was good and bad advertising. He despised many of the advertising that was being done at the time "silly advertisements, dishonest advertisements, disgusting advertisements...which have turned advertising into a circus" (Marchand, 1958 p.317). Regarding the market system he understood that advertisers were there to "interpret, and cater to, the consumer viewpoint"(Mayer, 1958). For him to serve the consumer was the only goal that advertising could have and in his extend career was a true example of this premise.

     As a chairman of the board at BBDO he was regarded as an autocratic and difficult to handle man, but nobody ever dared to argue that a lot of the success of BBDO would have not existed without the talent of Barton and his ability to transmit these talents to the ones he worked with.

Roy Sarles Durstine(December 13, 1886 – November 28, 1962)
" Advertising came into the world because men were too impatient for Mrs. Jones to tell Mrs. Smith that Brown’s pickles were good to eat" (Durstine, 1921)

Biography
     Roy Durstine was born in December 13, 1886 in Jamestown, North Dakota. He studied in Lawrenceville School from where he graduated. He attended Princeton University where he developed a very active student life, being the chairman of the Princeton Tiger, president of the Triangle Club and a member of the Cap and Gown Society. In 1908 he graduated from Princeton.

     Right after graduating from college he was employed as a reporter by the New York Sun, a very well respected newspaper at the time. After four intense years working for the Sun, he left his reporter job to join the team in Teddy Roosevelt’s unsuccessful Bull Moose campaign as public relations director.

     After these initial experiences Durstine steer his career into advertising. He first worked with Calkins and Holden where he became the secretary and treasurer. After four years in Calkins and Holden, he started working for Berrine in 1918. After World War I ended he founded Barton, Durstine with Barton, whom he had met while they were working on the home front doing fund-raising activities, and Osborn who met through Barton.

     Roy Durstine served as vice president and general manager of BBDO (the name that the firm got when it merged with George Batten’s company) for eight years, from 1928 to 1936, then as president for another three years. In 1939 he left the agency and founded his own company, the Roy S. Durstine Company, where he worked for the rest of his career.

     During all his life Durstine participated in many social, civic and community events. He was a member of the Maidstone Club of East Hampton, Long Island; the Devon Yacht Club; the University Club; member, trustee and past chairman of Guild Hall of East Hampton; and a trustee of the East Hampton Historical society.

     Durstine died in New York on November 28, 1962 at the age of 75.

     He received many awards for his work, such as the first Advertising Award for radio advertising in 1936. He also was an active player in the advertising industry, becoming the president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

     During his fifty years of work in advertising, Durstine wrote and published constantly. His first book, Making Advertisements And Making Them Pay was released in 1920. It summarized the advertisements that had been done up to that time and explains what he understands advertising should be. His following book, This Advertising Business, published in 1928, further developed the ideas of the first book. Additionally, Durstine defends the effectiveness and utility of Advertising. In this book he gives clues about why advertising sometimes does not work. By saying that advertising must be an integral part of the overall marketing strategy he became the pioneer of what later was called the Integrated Marketing Communications approach. After traveling through Germany and Russia, Durstine wrote his third book, Red Thunder in 1934. In this book Durstine thoroughly examines the Nazi and Soviet systems and its implications for advertising in those countries.

     Durstine not only wrote books but he was also a frequent contributor in trade magazines. His most famous articles were published in Nation’s Business magazine: Advertising Works – But Not Magic and The Machine that Creates Desire. In these two articles Durstine’s main concerns were helping people understand that advertising was an integral part of a business and also explaining how advertising works.

The Advertising Man
     Durstine was a pioneer in many ways. He was regarded as the father of commercial broadcasting. When radio was a not widely spread advertising medium compared to print, he understood the possibilities of the medium and founded the first agency radio department that was the seed for the later dominance of BBDO in the field of general broadcast advertising. He wrote a fifteen point plan to improve the quality of American commercial radio that turned to be almost a prophecy of what commercial broadcasting would become in the future.

     He was the first advertiser that understood advertising not as an attachment to a business but a basic piece that had to go along with the overall marketing strategy of the company. " The chief trouble is that it (advertising) is too often considered as something apart, something to be added onto a business or left off; that you can either take it or leave it alone. Good advertising is really an integral part of a business. It is a vital force which has a direct effect upon every department of a business" (Advertising works- but not magic).

     He was a strong supporter of introducing a code of ethics in the advertising business. He fiercely promoted the American Association of Advertising Agencies which he understood could be the regulator and promoter of this code of ethics.

     Durstine’s books and articles about advertising greatly contributed in drawing young, brilliant people to advertising. Durstine was thrilled to work with new talented people. He became a mentor for many future great advertisers. "They are new, versatile type in business-people with brains and hearts and imaginations. Helping them to progress is about the most interesting job in the world".(Durstine, 1932).

Alex Faickney Osborn(August 5, 1886 – July 5, 1967)
" ..my main task was to serve as a creative coach—to induce people to put their imaginations to greater use—to get them to produce more and better ideas for our clients." ( Osborn’s Personal Papers)

Biography
     Alexander F. Osborn came into this world on August 5, 1886 in the Bronx in New York City. He was the son of a modest accountant. Osborn spent his childhood in New York where he attended high school. Young Osborn graduated from Hamilton College where he started a drama club as well as he managed the football team and worked for the school newspaper. Fresh out of Hamilton College he started working as a reporter for the Buffalo Times. He lost his job due to the newspaper’s financial problems and joined the Buffalo Express. There he was fired from his job because of his lack of aptitude. After his disappointing experiences in the newspaper’s world he took various jobs in Buffalo. He worked for a milling company as statistician, he was the publicity man for the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce and also became a salesman for the Hard Manufacturing Company for three years. After quitting from his salesman job he joined the E.P. Remington agency in Buffalo, an in-house agency for a patent medicine maker, where he was appointed as new business manager. While working in E.P. Remington he combined his job with many other activities as a teacher of psychology for the Ford Motor Company, advertising teacher at the YMCA and also teaching in Sunday school.

     On September 5, 1916 he married the daughter of a wealthy Buffalo lawyer, Helen Coatsworth, with whom he had five children: Katharine, Marion, Russell, Barton, and Elinor. His new marital status pushed him to find a new job to improve his financial status. On January 1, 1919 BDO was founded thanks to the efforts of Bruce Barton who brought together Durstine, Osborn and himself and proposed to found an agency that would use the skills of the three men. During the first years of BDO, Osborn continued living in his loved Buffalo where he run the BDO office in the city.

     After almost twenty years of growth and successful campaigns for many clients and after making it through the depression years without too much struggle, in 1938 BBDO suddenly collapsed, losing many clients and key personnel. In this chaotic environment the figure of Osborn was the one that would pull BBDO through the business. Osborn moved to New York and worked harder than ever trying to keep BBDO clients as well as key management people that had received tempting offers from other agencies. After two years of lack of sleep and many hours of extra-work, the fate of BBDO changed when Osborn signed the Goodrich tire account. This account was the key that reinstalled confidence by proving to other potential clients and themselves that BBDO was able to sign new accounts.

     After this struggling years Osborn started publishing very often and became more and more interested in creative thinking which in 1954 lead to the creation of the Creative Education Foundation sustained by the royalties earned from his books. Since the first moment, Osborn got very involved with the Creative Education Foundation and arrived at a time when it drained too much of his energy. As a result he was unable to keep up with the agency’s requirements. In 1960, after more than forty years, he resigned from BBDO’s board of directors and started dedicating all his time to the foundation and his family.

     During his years in BBDO, Osborn was a frequent contributor to different trade publications such as Printer’s Ink and also wrote many books like How to "Think Up," a book that discussed the advertising creative process, Wake up your mind and one of the first textbooks in advertising, The Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking.

     On May 15, 1966, after a life driven by curiosity and creativity , Alex Osborn died from an rare incurable ailment.

The Advertising Man
     Alex Osborn perfectly defined what a advertising manager should be: a combination of great creativity and down-to-earth cunning business sense. These combined activities helped BDO to become the powerful advertising agency that it is today. Osborn was the basic key that helped BBDO to avoid the effects of the 29’s market crash and to overcome its great problems at the ending of the 30’s. Another smart decision in which Osborn has to be credited for is the merge of BDO with the George Batten Company in 1928. This agreement solidified in great manner the growth of the resulting company. During his years at BBDO Osborn not only stood out for his business decisions but for other decisions that helped to enhance the agency. These included the hire of extremely capable talents as Ben Duffy, who would eventually rise to the position of president of BBDO and being able to convince key management people to stay with BBDO regardless greater economic offers from other agencies.

     In Your Creative Power, a book published in 1948, Alex Osborn presented the technique that he had been using for many years in BBDO: Brainstorming. The objective of this creative process was to encourage and enhance creative thinking by creating an inhibited atmosphere where all ideas are good and not judged at first hand. The success of this technique was enormous and most agencies are still using it today.

     Osborn developed many great advertising campaigns during his lifetime. The best were his campaigns for General Electric, Armstrong Cork, Chrysler, General Baking, Royal Crown Cola, American Tobacco, BF Goodrich, Du Pont and Wildroot Hair Tonic.

Bibliography

Barton, B.F. and Lichtenberg, B. (1930) Advertising Campaigns. New York: Alexander Hamilton Institute.

Durstine, R.S. (1921) Making Advertisements and Making Them Pay. New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Durstine, R.S. (1925) Advertising Works – But Not Magic. Nation’s Business. June, 18-19.

Durstine, R.S. (1928) The Machine That Creates Desire. Nation’s Business. June, 29-30.

Fox, S. (1984) The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. New York: William Morrow.

Marchand, R. (1985) Advertising: The American Dream. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mayer, M. (1958) Madison Avenue U.S.A. New York: Harper.

McElvaine, R.S. (1984) The Great Depression: America, 1929-41. New York: New York Times Books.

McGaughey, R. And Mofield, W.R. (1994) Roy Sarles Durstine in The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising.Ed. Edd Applegate. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Osborn, A.F. (1953) Applied Imagination: The Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Osborn, A.F. (1955) The Goldmine Between Your Ears. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Osborn, A.F. (1964) How to Become More Creative. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Osborn, A.F. (1948) Your Creative Power. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Osborn, A.F. (1952) Wake Up Your Mind. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Parente, D.E. and Osborn, J.R. (1994) Alex F. Osborn in The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising.Ed. Edd Applegate. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Thompson, L.D. (1994) Bruce Fairchild Barton in The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising.Ed. Edd Applegate. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Anonymous, (1962) Newsweek. December 10, 64.

Anonymous, (1937) Idea Man of Buffalo. Advertising & Selling. September 9, 12. BBDO