Business & Finance: Happiest Day

On the tenth floor of an office building at No. 383 Madison Ave., Manhattan, is located the George Batten Co., Inc., long established, nationally known advertising agency. On the seventh floor of the same building is the Barton, Durstine & Osborne Co., Inc., not so long established but equally famed. Last week some 40 members of the Batten organization gathered in their directors’ room. To them came President William B. Johns, elderly, heavyset, deep voiced. He told them that this was the happiest day of his life. He told them that the George Batten Co., Inc., and the Barton, Durstine & Osborne Co., Inc., had been united in a new company—Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, Inc. Meanwhile, to a group of Barton, Durstine & Osborne employes, Roy C. Durstine, short, wiry, made essentially the same announcement. So was made public the greatest advertising merger of many a year.

Back of Mr. Johns’ announcement, back of Mr. Durstine’s announcement, lay months of conference, of negotiation. The beginning of the merger came from a brief, an apparently casual conversation between Mr. Johns and Mr. Durstine. Meeting in an advertising convention at Washington, Mr. Johns and Mr. Durstine spoke much as follows:

Mr. Johns: I have a large agency.

Mr. Durstine: Yes.

Mr. Johns: You have a large agency.

Mr. Durstine: Yes.

Mr. Johns: Do you realize that our two agencies have not a single conflicting account?

Mr. Durstine: Is that so? Well, what do you mean by all this?

Mr. Johns: Not a thing in the world.

Back in Manhattan, however, the two agents renewed their conversations, spoke more plainly, planned more definitely.* Who are the leading figures in Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, Inc., newest of advertising agencies? Since the death of George Batten, the dominant personality at Batten’s has been William B. Johns. Mr. Johns worked his way up through the organization, of which he has held almost every executive position, including the topmost. From presidency to presidency went Mr. Johns; from presidency to chairman of the board goes Mr. Barton. Known outside the advertising world for books on Christ and on the Bible, Mr. Barton has arrived at a position in which the actual details of advertising production need not much concern him. The actual production in Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, Inc., will be directed by Vice President Roy C. Durstine.

*Among the advertised products which the Batten company contributes to the combined concern are Armstrong Linoleum; Colgate products (including Rapid Shave Cream, Ribbon Dental Cream, Fab, Cashmere Bouquet Soap, Coleo Soap, Octagon Soap, Super Suds); Hamilton Watch, Walkover shoes, Edgeworth tobacco, McCallum hosiery, Prophylactic tooth brushes, United Fruit Co. bananas. From the Barton, Durstine-Osborne quota comes Alexander Hamilton correspondence school; Atwater Kent radios, Cluett Peabody Arrow Collars; Dorothy Gray toilet preparations; General Electric Co. products; General Motors (institutional-not the individual cars); Gillette razors; Oshkosh trunks; L. C. Smith and Corona typewriters; Triplex safety glass; Standard Oil Co. of New York.