Last week the following were news:
¶ At 36, Adman William B. ("Bill") Benton retired from his Manhattan firm of Benton & Bowles. Many a Yale graduate has vowed he would make a fortune in a hurry, then retire while he could enjoy it. Adman Benton actually did.
In Bill Benton's class of 1921 at Yale there was a nimble-witted youngster named Chester B. ("Chet") Bowles with whom he had only a nodding acquaintance. But by 1929 Bowles knew Benton as ace assistant to Lord & Thomas Adman Albert Lasker in Chicago. Benton knew Bowles as a crack writer who was turning out some $4,000,000 worth of copy annually for Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn in Manhattan. Few months before the stock-market crash, Adman Benton, then 29, and Adman Bowles, then 28, went into the New York Secretary of State's office, came out as Benton & Bowles, Inc. Glib Partner Bowles began to write copy. Aggressive Partner Benton went out to sell it.
First big account was Certo, for General Foods Corp. Knowing nothing about gelatin products, Partner Benton went to New Jersey, Partner Bowles to Connecticut, ringing doorbells for four months, asking housewives questions until they had 533 typewritten pages of data for their campaign. General Foods gave the young firm a terrific boost when it handed Salesman Benton six big food accounts on his birthday in 1932, still entrusts it with a handsome slice of its $10,000,000 annual advertising budget. One of Benton & Bowles's smartest stunts was to cash in on 1933 Repeal sentiment for Adolf Gobel, Inc. (frankfurters). Tired of writing about food, food, food, B. & B. called up 200 women in Manhattan, found only seven in favor of the 18th Amendment. Promptly they spread copy predicting return of beer and plugging its time-honored connection with spiced meats. Kernel of the campaign was Gobel's offer to donate a part of each sale to some worthy anti-Prohibition organization. Gobel's sausage sales jumped from 21,000 Ib. per week to 54,000 lb.*
¶ For those who like to draw spiderweb charts in support of the theory that U. S. industry is banker-dominated, a possible starting point might be No. 2 Wall Street, home of Manhattan's First National, the "Baker Bank." A list of the late, famed George Fisher Baker's directorships included a choice slice of U. S. industry. Since the old banker died in 1931 at the age of 91 the Baker seats have been filled by George Fisher Baker Jr., now 58. As tight-lipped as his father, Banker Baker has offered no explanation for his recent resignations from the boards of General Electric, New York Central and Consolidated Gas Co. of New York. Nor was any explanation given last week when he left two other traditional Baker seats, U. S. Steel and Pullman. Reports were that Mr. Baker was in poor health. On his shoulders still rest directorships in General Motors Corp., Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York, Provident Loan Society, American Museum of Natural History, New York Public Library. Like his father before him, Banker Baker would probably let only Death sever his connection with American Telephone & Telegraph Co.