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agency’s sales pitches worked with scientific precision. In JWT’s ads, doctors and scientists testified to the efficacy of products along with the usual movie stars.
    The hierarchy of the agency was also a break with what had gone before. Resor was literally the kind of boss whose door was always open. At the same time, he consciously resisted meddling in the day-to-day work of the agency, assuming that people would come to him if there was a problem. Instead, account handlers were overseen by a core of high-ranking executives known as ‘backstoppers’. Any urgent matters that arose during the week were discussed with senior management at an informal Thursday lunch.
    With Stanley Resor’s administrative skills perfectly balanced by Helen’s creative genius, JWT became the most successful advertising agency to date (although it was some years before it became the first to pass the US $100 million billings mark, in 1947). Thanks to the General Motors account, of which it held a chunk until the Depression, the agency followed the example of its founder by opening branches around the world: Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America… a pioneering network that would fuel future growth.
    Symbolic of its status was its move in 1927 to the monolithic Graybar Building, next to Grand Central Station – the largest office building in the world at the time. This daunting Art Deco skyscraper, with vaguely nautical embellishments, features gargoyles in the form of steel rats scurrying up the ‘mooring ropes’ that support the canopy above the front entrance.
    The interior design of JWT’s offices was overseen by Helen Resor. Work spaces were divided by wrought iron grilles, instead of walls, so the entire staff could admire the view from the 11th-floor windows. The walls that remained were adorned by a growing art collection, and Helen established her own department among an all-female team of copywriters. Meanwhile, the quietly authoritarian Stanley Resor ruled over the agency from a baronial panelled office. But the executive dining room was modelled on the kitchen of an 18th-century Massachusetts farmhouse, suggesting that, despite everything, the couple had rather provincial tastes.
    An onomatopoeic agency
    The comedian Fred Allen famously observed that the name BBDO sounded like ‘a steamer trunk falling down a flight of stairs’. By then the agency had entered the 1940s. Its original name was even more of a mouthful: Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. But that’s rushing things a bit. Before BBDO, there was BDO. Still with me?
    The simple fact is that Bruce Barton became the most famous adman of his day. The son of a church minister, in 1924 he wrote a ‘modern’ biography of Jesus Christ, called The Man Nobody Knows , which was the bestselling book in America for two years in a row. In it he described Jesus as the ultimate adman, who had ‘picked 12 men from the bottom ranks of business and transformed them into a world-conquering organization’. Barton advised his clients to get in touch with the ‘souls’ of their companies before they began communicating to the public. After all, if they didn’t have faith in their own organization, how could they preach it to others? ‘Barton had a regard for business that crossed the border from respect to reverence,’ notes an article in Advertising Age (‘Advertising’s true believer’, 3 August 1999).
    Barton had started out as a journalist on the magazine Collier’s Weekly , where he occasionally turned his hand to writing copy for advertisers such as Harvard Classics, with its series of educational books. Later, he was involved in First World War sloganeering, which is how he met advertising men Alex Osborn and Roy Durstine. The trio served together on a panel planning the United War Work campaign. In 1918, Osborn and Durstine invited Barton to join their start-up agency. Although he