Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising

The J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT) collection at Duke University’s Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing outlines the swift changes that a revitalized organized labor culture made to music-making in the advertising industry between 1954 and 1960, as groups like the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFTRA), and the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) negotiated for updated talent guidelines. The papers of John F. Devine, JWT’s Vice President of Radio and Television during this period, are especially illuminating, as he served as a representative for the advertising industry in several union negotiations through the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) and was further responsible (in collaboration with JWT contracts officer Marion Preston) for enacting JWT’s operational responses to the new rules. This chapter traces, with a specific focus on issues faced by advertisers during this period, Devine and the AAAA’s role in talent negotiations, SAG and AFTRA’s tussle over jurisdiction regarding videotaped material, the significant transitional period the AFM endured as its contentious Music Performance Trust Fund was challenged by both its members and their employers, and JWT’s in-house responses to resulting talent contract changes.