Albert Lasker

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Albert Lasker (1880-1952) is often considered to be the founder of modern advertising. He started out as a newspaper reporter while a teenager, but moved to Chicago and started working at Lord & Thomas advertising agency which he owned by the age of 20. He remained its chief executive for more than forty years before selling out to three staff members, Foote, Cone & Belding.

Lasker started out as an office boy at Lord & Thomas in 1898. A year later, one of the agency's salemsmen left, and Lasker accquired his territory. It was during this time that Lasker created his first campaign. He hired a friend, Eugene Katz, to write the copy for a series of Wilson Ear Drum Company ads. They featured a photograph of a man cupping his ear. George Wilson, president of the Ear Drum company, adopted the ads and sales increased.

Lasker had an enquiring mind about what advertising was and how it worked. In 1904 he met John E. Kennedy who had been a Canadian mounted policemen and who now promised him to tell him what advertising was. Lasker believed that advertising was news, but Kennedy said to him that, "news is a technique of presentation, but advertising is a very simple thing. I can give it to you in three words, it is "salesmanship in print.""

The first client they put this principle to work on was The 1900 Washer Co. Such was the success of this, that within four months of running the first ad their advertising spend went from $15,000 a year to $30,000 a month and within six months were one of the three or four largest advertisers in the USA.

In 1908 he recruited Claude C. Hopkins to the firm specifically to work on The Van Camp Packaging Company (Van Camp's) account. The relationship lasted for 17 years.

Lasker is largely responsible for America's infatuation with orange juice. Lord & Thomas acquired the Sunkist Growers account in 1910, when Lasker was 30. The citrus industry was in a slump, and California growers were producing so many oranges that they were cutting down trees in order to limit supply. Lasker created campaigns that not only encouraged consumers to eat oranges, but also to eat orange juice. He was able to increase consumption enough that the growers stopped chopping down their groves. Image:Http://www.anbhf.org/graphics/lasker files/sunkist2.jpg

Among Lasker's pioneering contributions were the introduction into schools of classes that would explain to young girls about menstruation (done to promote Kotex tampons). He is also credited as being the inventor of the soap opera, with being responsible for the fact that radio (and television after it) is an advertising-driven medium, and with having masterminded Warren Harding's election campaign.

The Lasker Awards are named for him.