Esty's First

A few months ago William Esty, 37, left the advertising agency of J. (for James) Walter Thompson Co. to start in business for himself. He employed a staff of experts and had "William Esty & Co. Inc." painted on his office door. Then he went out to solicit business, turning down small accounts, gunning for big ones.

Agent Esty likes to remark, "If you succeed you're a genius. If not, you're a fool." For 17 years he has been succeeding. He got his first job with Chicago's Motion Picture News, then sold space for Butterick Publishing Co.'s Home Sector. He worked with several agencies before he went with J. Walter Thompson in 1925. There he was a vice president, handled the Lux (soap) account. His specialty is psychology. To study abnormal minds he has built up one of the largest private libraries on the subject. His studies of the mass mind are made at Coney Island and in large department stores, subways. On many a summer night he has, though usually a reticent person, traded places with a barker at Coney Island. Agent Esty's father was a professor at the University of Illinois, his uncle and grandfather taught at Amherst. His brother, the late Lucien Esty, wrote Ask Me Another books. Just before Thanksgiving Day, William Esty & Co. landed its first big account--and only one so far. It was that of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. which spends $15,000,000 a year on advertising Camels and Prince Albert. When Reynolds introduced Camels in 1913 the account was given to N. W. Ayer & Son, Inc. It remained there until 1931 when Erwin, Wasey & Co. obtained it and launched the famed cellophane campaign with the $50,000-in-prizes letter contest. Recently Camel advertising has been confined chiefly to magazines. Advertising men expect that the new Estyfied copy will appear early in January, first in newspapers. Agent Esty was performing the first part of the campaign in orthodox fashion last week, letting nobody know the nature of the bait that lured the Camels.

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