Heretic in the House

The success of Will Calloway Grant, 36, of Chicago, is the current sensation of the U.S. advertising business. Few weeks ago one rival ad salesman grew so envious that he started a rumor that Grant Advertising Inc. owed its vertical rise in gross billings to such dubious practices as taking split-commission contracts.* Grant's answer was typical--and, as usual, irritating to the rest of the secretive advertising world: last week an auditor was going over his books right back to the day when he got his first account. Grant then blandly--and publicly--suggested that the entire industry might follow his lead.

No Time for the Law. Will Grant's life has been unorthodox. Working his way through Southern Methodist University (1924-28), he sold so much advertising for the students' annual April Fool paper (he made $1,000 for himself in two weeks) that the University abolished the paper, on the grounds that big business was not a suitable student endeavor. He went on to law school at Texas University, where he became so engrossed in earning his keep that he never got around to becoming a lawyer.

Will Grant came to see that advertising was his dish. He sold his bulletin-board advertising business (which he had organized in 27 colleges) for $7,000, started to learn about selling and printing at R. R. Donnelley & Sons. By 1935 he had learned and saved enough to open his own advertising firm in Dallas. The first year was tough: he sold only $9,000 worth of advertising, had to pawn his Model T five times to keep in business.

Then he snagged an account from the thriving Vanette Hosiery Co. and business began to look up for Will Grant. In 1936 his gross billings went to $40,000; in 1937 (when he moved his headquarters to Chicago) they jumped to $87,000; in 1938 to $200,000. Last year Grant Advertising placed $4,500,000 and this year, its business will double that. One main reason: Chicago's conservative, rich Cudahy Packing Co. transferred its entire advertising business to Grant. In one recent week Grant's billings jumped $1,000,000.

The Flying Spearhead. The Cudahy-to-Grant deal reveals Will Grant's secret. Last year he decided that Cudahy's lush Old Dutch Cleanser business (handled by Blackett-Sample-Hummert) was fair game. He called in all his employes for a session on what was good or bad about Old Dutch--and other--cleansers. Then he got some of his research staff (the mail-room girls look like Powers models) licensed to sell Dutch Cleanser from door to door, taking notes while housewives scrubbed. He set others to scrubbing every bathtub in the 450-room Knickerbocker Hotel, even did some research on his own hook, scouring a frying pan that his secretary smeared with thick black grease. And his "flying spearhead" (top Grant executives from all offices who move in on a given advertising problem in one place, speed on to the next) flew to Chicago.

From every researcher came an itemized account. Synthesized into one story, they sold Cudahy on using Grant's agency, produced a new slogan: "Old Dutch Cleanser cleans your sink 69 more times than any other cleanser." Whether or not the slogan was statistically accurate, bona fide housewife affidavits in Grant Advertising files stood behind it.

Last week Grant employes greeted each other, not with "Good morning" but with the more-or-less nauseous names they had dreamed up for Cudahy's new oleomargarine (the winner, "Delrich"). The intense personal interest that every Grant employe takes in Grant's business has a solid foundation: they all get at least one raise a year (some have had six or seven), plus a bonus every time a new account comes in.

Mexican Invasion. All this commotion has turned Grant Advertising Inc. into the fastest-growing U.S. agency geographically as well as financially. On Will Grant's office wall is a map of the world with dated stickers in strategic places: Dallas, 1935; Chicago, 1937; New York, 1940; Monter rey and Mexico City, 1941; Rio, Buenos Aires and Valparaiso, 1943 -- and so on through to Natal in 1945. So far all Grant offices have opened on schedule. In Mexico his invasion was so sudden and so complete that he now places some 60% of all the advertising in the country, and in Mexico City (with 130 employes, 99% of them Mexican) is his biggest single office. (Grant has a fertile mind. When Mexicans tore down his billboards, even those made of steel, to use as roofs, Grant had the steel perforated.)

Already the advertising colossus of Mexico, Will Grant is just beginning to capitalize on the Good Neighbor Policy. This week an ex-hoofer and NBC production man, Bucky Harris (head of Grant in Mexico), and fast-moving, 27-year-old Grant Vice President David Echols are in Rio setting up a big new office. Grant's Mexican clients already include Pan American Airways, American Chicle, Bacardi, Canada Dry, Vick Chemical and Socony-Vacuum. For good measure, Will Grant handles the Mexican publicity for the Latin American edition of the Reader's Digest.

Insult to Injury. Will Grant's saga has a climax: his is probably the only U.S. advertising agency that is also a war manufacturer. For the Navy he is making a Grant-improved "coordinate transformer" --a plastic-covered globe-on-cardboard gadget that helps to short-cut latitude & longitude readings. But what really makes other advertising men bite their nails is that Will Grant's sales lexicon includes none of the usual rules about "contacts." Grant salesmen, in fact, have on occasion committed the ultimate heresy: when clients drop around to lunch or dine with a Grant executive, the clients have been known to grab for the check, and get it.

* Advertising agency earnings come from commissions (ususually 15%) on the cost of the space they buy for their clients in newspapers, magazines, etc. Some agencies occasionally prearrange with their clients to return some of the 15% in special services or cash, in return get large contracts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.