ADVERTISING: Hurry-Up Man

Just ten years ago, Marion Harper Jr., fresh from Yale, got a job as office boy at McCann-Erickson, Inc., one of the six largest U.S. advertising agencies. Tall (6 ft. 1 in.), strapping (190 Ibs.) Harper was far from the outsider’s idea of an advertising man. He was quiet and studious; he did not wear hand-painted ties, didn’t smoke, showed not a single huckster characteristic.

But he had been an office boy only three months when he was moved into the copy research department where he could put his liking for market research to work. Not long after, Harper was made manager of copy research: at 28, only seven years after he had left Yale, he was vice president in charge of research and merchandising.

By bearing down on market studies, he helped boost the agency’s billings from $46 million in 1946 to a 1948 rate of more than $50 million. Last week in Manhattan, at 32, Marion Harper was made president as Founder H. K. McCann, 68, moved up to board chairman. Said an awed agency director, in summarizing Harper’s rise: “He energizes people . . . he’s got so much energy himself. The agency has never had such good teamwork before.”

On Harper’s team is his wife Virginia, whom he met while she was a clerical worker at the agency, and married in 1942. She is now assistant director of McCann-Erickson’s copy research department. Having no children, Mr. & Mrs. Harper sometimes stay at the office until 2 a.m., working together. Says Mrs. Harper: “I think he’s quite bright.”