J. Walter Thompson
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45
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27
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25
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Search complete. 45 mentions across 27 episodes found for "J. Walter Thompson".
Oct 28, 2026
Billy ShoreHOST
And I know that our listeners are going to be interested in not just what you're doing now, Christy, but how you came to be doing it.
Billy ShoreHOST
And I know you've actually got a background, which I think of as the dream background for Share Our Strength, because you were in Peace Corps, you were in the corporate sector working in advertising at J. Walter Thompson.
Billy ShoreHOST
I always think of Returned Peace Corps volunteers as one of the great uh success markers for share our strength because we've had quite a few here but uh tell us where it all started like where you were born and raised your family uh how you ended up in the peace corps and how you ended up doing what you're doing now
Christy Duncan AndersonGUEST
oh wow that's that's a long story um i'm born and raised in pleasonton california if you can believe that which is where uh safeway headquarters has been um i grew up in a family that had enough but just just enough Out of college, I started working in advertising and was doing great, but really felt the calling to do something else and joined the, just kind of ran away and joined the Peace Corps.
Stephen ShawHOST
As a result, agencies have been hollowed out, populated by junior staff with few mentors to coach or inspire them.
Stephen ShawHOST
The decline and fall of agencies can be traced back directly to the rise of the financial holding companies in the mid-1980s and 90s, beginning with Martin Sorrell's WPP in 1985, when he went on an acquisition spree acquiring Ogilvy and JWT.
Stephen ShawHOST
Sorrell insisted on fatter profit margins in order to drive up share value and sought to cut the surplus capacity out of his agencies by reducing the headcount.
Stephen ShawHOST
But he also hived off the media divisions into separate profit centers to compete against the independent media companies.
17 MINS LATER
Stephen ShawHOST
Sorrell, I think, again, the smoking gun, I think he got the ball rolling on this by splitting off the media agency from the creative agency.
Stephen ShawHOST
What was the thinking behind that? I don't quite get that.
Michael FarmerGUEST
Yeah, to go back to the first part of that question, Stephen, at the time, up to about, I think, 2001 or 2002 or so, these big agencies, the OVLVs, the JWTs, the Y&Rs, the BBDOs, TBWAs, et cetera, all of them had media operations.
Michael FarmerGUEST
And they made their money by getting a 15% commission on media spend and a 17.5% commission on it.
John ClorHOST
to fake some of the data that would be needed for Henry Ford II to approve the Mustang.
John ClorHOST
During the Fairlane Committee meetings in that hotel, they coerced J. Walter Thompson, who was representative, to come up with some fake numbers.
John ClorHOST
That's what I heard.
John ClorHOST
Every time I went to talk to someone, no comment.
Mandy HortonHOST
Her image was made by white men to reflect the social order they thought America wanted to see in their homes and at their breakfast table.
Mandy HortonHOST
The J. Walter Thompson Company, an advertising agency, began working with the Aunt Jemima brand to produce ads with James Webb Young as the creative force behind the campaigns.
Mandy HortonHOST
Young is known for his psychological manipulation tactics in ad design, most famously for his ad design campaign within the curve of a woman's arm for Odorono deodorant.
Mandy HortonHOST
Webb aimed most of his work at women, yet he expressed an aggressive contempt for them.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
But there was a concerted campaign starting around the late 1960s into the early 1970s where the industry really leveled this up.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
We found documents from the American Gas Association's firm J. Walter Thompson describing this campaign in depth, that they created this slogan, and spent millions on advertising in all kinds of mediums, TV shows and magazines, a lot of it addressing women directly, that gas was a clean energy source.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
Some of the context leading into this campaign, why they started this massive effort, was because they were finding in their own internal polling that they were actually facing some perception problems from the public.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
That the public, according to their polling, thought gas was a polluting source.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
they were saying was true? So the American Gas Association had hired this advertising firm, J.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
Walter Thompson, to do this campaign.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
And J. Walter Thompson itself, in its docs, recognized, quote, "...the lack of clear, simple, substantiating facts on the pollution aspects of natural gas." This quote was a recognition that they didn't actually have the support backing up what they claimed, that gas was clean.
Rebecca LeberGUEST
While industry executives were saying this is true, gas is clean, we have all the facts, there are Lots of ways that they undercut themselves, that they actually recognized that gas did have problems that they were not informing the public about.
Rene Bell AdamsGUEST
We launched Bourne Shoes, and I worked on that campaign and cast it and all the things.
Rene Bell AdamsGUEST
And then I had worked... um with actually somebody that knew chandra uh from j walter thompson and then our company got absorbed and she called chandra and set everything up because i was like i'm ready to move back to chicago which is where i'm originally from so i knew when i interviewed and that's why i didn't accept the job right away i was like all right this is a little intimidating this is a direction i i That wasn't talked to me in school.
Rene Bell AdamsGUEST
We had just started getting email.
Rene Bell AdamsGUEST
I mean, that's how.
Shelley WynterHOST
So let me tell you, years ago, my first job... out of college was as a media planner at, at the time, one of the top two ad agencies in the world, Young and Rubicam.
Shelley WynterHOST
At the time, Saatchi and Saatchi, Young and Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson, those were the big three.
Shelley WynterHOST
And I got my first job out of college was at Young and Rubicam as a media planner.
Shelley WynterHOST
So excited that I was in the advertising game.
John KremerHOST
Long before penning his landmark book, Jay was quietly honing his skills in the absolute highest, most competitive tiers of the advertising world.
John KremerHOST
Throughout the 1970s, he worked as a creative director at legendary ad agencies like Leo Burnett in London and J. Walter Thompson.
John KremerHOST
He was literally building campaigns at the absolute highest level of corporate advertising.
John KremerHOST
And this perfectly set the stage for his entrepreneurial leap, because he already understood human psychology, consumer behavior, and the hardcore mathematics of direct response before he ever attempted to help small businesses.
speaker_1HOST
The belly of the beast.
John KremerHOST
He was a creative director at Leo Burnett in London and later at J. Walter Thompson.
speaker_1HOST
And for context, if you aren't deeply entrenched in advertising history, those names might just sound like generic corporate firms to you.
John KremerHOST
Right.
John KremerHOST
Like an accounting firm or something.
speaker_1HOST
They are not.
speaker_1HOST
Leo Burnett and J. Walter Thompson were the absolute titans of the industry.
John KremerHOST
Huge.
Robin ZanderHOST
In 1966, diamonds meant nothing there.
Robin ZanderHOST
Then comes the advertising agency hired for the international efforts by De Beers, JWT.
Robin ZanderHOST
In 1963, De Beers engaged J. Walter Thompson to develop marketing and advertising internationally.
Robin ZanderHOST
From Zollner, in 1966, the year of the first advertising blitz in Japan, less than 1% of Japanese women received a diamond engagement ring when they got married.
Robin ZanderHOST
Epstein, from A Rise and Fall of Diamonds, put a dollar figure on the Japanese operation.
Robin ZanderHOST
Within 10 years, De Beers succeeded even beyond its most optimistic expectations in creating a billion dollar a year diamond tradition in Japan.
Robin ZanderHOST
JWT ran Japanese magazine ads featuring European stylized women wearing diamond rings while skiing, sailing, and doing outdoor sports.
Robin ZanderHOST
They glamorized Western values against a 1,500-year-old tradition of arranged marriages in Japan.
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