End of a Name

Announced this week was the end of one of the oldest, most famous names in U.S. advertising. From now on Lord & Thomas, which has made a household byword of hundreds of other names from Lucky Strike to Pepsodent and Sunkist oranges, will be known as Foote, Cone & Belding--after the present active heads of its New York, Chicago and Los Angeles offices, Executive Vice Presidents Emerson Foote, Fairfax Cone and Don Belding.

To the advertising world it was almost as if Tiffany had announced that from now on it would be known as Jones, Smith & Johnson. For Lord & Thomas, in its 70 years of life, has placed well over three-quarters of a billion dollars' worth of advertising, has for years been among the largest agencies in the U.S. It was a pioneer in radio, in the early days placed over 30% of all national radio advertising.

L. & T. also pioneered (in 1908) the then-revolutionary concept of "salesmanship in print," out of which grew today's range of product, consumer and copy testing that enables the advertising world to speak of its work as scientific. Scratch almost any leading agency today and you will find at least one major executive who got his start at L. & T.

Reason for liquidating such a triple-plated, diamond-studded corporate asset as the name of Lord & Thomas: the retirement of its owner and president, Chicago Philanthropist Albert Davis Lasker. Albert Lasker's name has been synonymous with Lord & Thomas for more than 30 years. Dopesters figured that he took his identification with the name too personally to leave it to someone else.

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