Background
Stanley Burnet Resor was born on April 30, 1879 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Isaac Burnet Resor and Mary Wilson Brown. His family owned a stove manufacturing firm, but it passed from family control.
Stanley Burnet Resor was born on April 30, 1879 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Isaac Burnet Resor and Mary Wilson Brown. His family owned a stove manufacturing firm, but it passed from family control.
Resor was a student at Yale. He graduated in 1901 with a B. A.
Resor went to Europe on a cattle boat. Upon his return, he worked briefly as a bank clerk and as a salesman. In 1904, he joined the Proctor and Collier Advertising Agency in Cincinnati.
Four years later, he became manager of the Cincinnati office of the New York-based J. Walter Thompson Company. With him were his older brother, Walter, and Helen Lansdowne, a talented copywriter. In 1912, Resor moved to Thompson's New York headquarters as vice-president and general manager.
In 1916, J. Walter Thompson, who had owned the agency since 1878, decided to retire, in part because he believed the advertising business was nearing the limits of its potential. With several associates, Resor purchased the firm for $500, 000. He became its largest stockholder and president and held the post until 1955, continuing as chairman of the board until 1961.
During Resor's presidency, J. Walter Thompson became the largest advertising agency in the world. Its billings (the volume of the advertising it placed) grew from about $3 million in 1916 to more than $370 million when Resor retired in 1961.
By then the firm employed about 6, 225 people and maintained offices in more than twenty foreign countries. Resor's success at J. Walter Thompson was not based on his copywriting talents or ability to charm clients. Indeed, one associate described him as "one of the least articulate men alive. "
He never enunciated a clear theory of advertising and never imposed a distinctive style on his agency. His chief accomplishment was to make advertising part of broader marketing strategies.
He built an organization in which attention to details of technique combined with concentration on the fundamental purpose of selling the client's products.
At Yale, Resor had read the English historian Henry Thomas Buckle, whose works convinced him that human behavior in the aggregate was scientifically predictable. Buckle became required reading for Thompson executives. Resor relied heavily on market research and the compilation of statistical data.
As early as 1912, the agency published a volume of demographic information, Population and Its Distribution; under Resor, the study was periodically revised and reissued. Similarly, in 1939, Resor established the J. Walter Thompson consumer panel to provide a continuing source of data on consumer buying preferences.
Resor disliked the term "advertising agency" and was glad that those words did not appear in the company's name. Indeed, during his administration, J. Walter Thompson became more than the creator and distributor of advertisements. It offered advice and assistance on marketing activities ranging from the development of new products to corporate public relations.
John B. Watson, the behaviorist psychologist, became a vice-president in 1924, and Arno H. Johnson held the position of senior economist for several years. Persuaded that advertising could be made scientific, Resor also hoped to make the industry professional. J. Walter Thompson firmly refused to solicit new clients by preparing potential advertising campaigns for them, because Resor felt that doing so would divert resources from the agency's current accounts. Furthermore, such presentations would lack the knowledge of a company's marketing needs that a good agency required.
Resor also refused to let Thompson handle distilled liquor accounts. Despite Thompson's growth, Resor tried to keep the agency's structure uncomplicated.
Reportedly, when he was shown a proposed organization chart, he simply erased all the lines connecting the boxes. For each brand that Thompson advertised, an account representative handled all relations with the client and shared responsibility with a group head who supervised the copywriters and artists working on the account. The loose structure was complemented by an open-door policy for top executives.
Yet the demand for precision and the conservative styles of the firm's leaders produced an atmosphere described as "severely informal. "
He died in New York City.
Although he usually shunned advertising conferences and rarely gave public speeches, he served as president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies in 1923-1924 .
On March 6, 1917, he married Helen Lansdowne; they had three children.