The J. Walter Thompson advertising agency is one of the prototypes for the ‘Madmen’ of advertising, the architype of the explosion of consumer advertising that occurred in the sixties.
The agency was started by James Walter Thompson in 1896, when the ‘advertising’ function was nothing more than a brokerage service for selling space in newspapers.
Advertising in those days, well before even radio and consumer magazines, had only newspapers as their communication medium. It slowly expanded into creating the ‘advertising product’ to make selling the space easier into the expanding range of communication options, all on commission.
Simple days.
Most success relies on simple things, breaking down the complex so they are easily understood. So it was with advertising in those early days, before we were blasted by ever increasingly complex offers and intrusive psychological hooks to sell us more stuff.
It is often useful to go back to these roots, to see what made for success early, what were the simple things that worked.
The ‘Thompson T-Square’ is one such tool in copywriting.
Every successful copywriter used it, a few simple questions to focus the mind on what was really important as they wrote the copy. At J. Walter Thompson, it was pinned to the wall of every copywriters office.
What are we selling?
To whom are we selling it?
Where are we selling it?
When are we selling it?
How are we selling it?
Simplistic yes, but also effective, and leading to the ‘four P’s’ of marketing, articulated by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960.
Those simple questions lead to the consideration of the most effective articulation of value to the ideal customer, who would be receiving the messages in a manner that made them comfortable, and receptive to the idea of a purchase.
So, the simple answer to the question in the header is ‘Yes, every day”, it still works!
The header is an 1868 portrait of James Walter Thompson, courtesy of Wikipedia.
