Boom at J.W.T.

Just about everything in the advertising business is kept secret except who handles what accounts--a tradition that helps make the industry one of the most gossip-ridden of all businesses. But by last week it was not even a gossip secret that J. Walter Thompson was having an unprecedented boom. Within the month J.W.T. has snagged: 1) the entire Ford account-- from Detroit's Maxon Inc.; 2) Lever Bros.' Vimms from B.B.D.&O.; 3) most of Owens-Illinois Glass from D'Arcy.

What all this meant to J.W.T. in new billings was in the area of purest guesswork. Tide, advertising weekly, guessed at least $7,000,000, added that the bonanza put Thompson "neck & neck with Young & Rubicam for the No. 1 spot." Tide seemed overkind to Y. & R.: J.W.T. itself admits to $17,000,000 of new business during the past two years. Said Y. & R., in its best let's-not-knife-the-competition-in-public manner: "No comment." And the peripatetic Ford account, for which J.W.T. hastily divested itself of its small slice of Chrysler business, moved over for a very significant reason: J.W.T.'s worldwide agency setup.

Said a determinedly anonymous Ford bigwig last week: "It's a question of being ready for postwar--and it wouldn't cost us any more to be ready than not ready."

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