The Jones Boys

For years along Manhattan's Ad Alley, hard-driving Duane Jones has been called the "box-top king." Working on such accounts as Bab-O, Sweetheart Toilet Soap and Tetley Tea, he plugged the products by distributing millions of box-top premiums. After he started his own agency ten years ago, Duane Jones Co., Inc.'s billings rose spectacularly, from $1,200,000 to $9,000,000.

Last year Adman Jones got a rude shock. Nine of his key aides, who owned less than 1/2 of 1% of the company, decided the agency would do better without him. President Robert Hayes told him, said Jones, that if he did not sell out within 48 hours, the nine rebels would quit and take their accounts with them.

Jones refused. The rebels formed the new agency of Scheideler, Beck & Werner, Inc., and grabbed off some of Jones's juiciest accounts (notably the $3,000,000-a-year Sweetheart Soap account). Charging a "conspiracy" to put him out of business, Jones filed a $2.000,000 damage suit last fall. It was the first time anyone had legally questioned a traditional Ad Alley practice; new agencies are constantly being formed by account executives who walk out of their old agencies with their pet accounts in their pockets. During the 20-day trial, Jones himself cheerfully testified that when he left Maxon, Inc. in 1942 to form his own agency, he took the Bab-O and Tetley accounts along with him.

Just as candidly, the defendants told the court why they had been so anxious to get rid of the boss: Jones, a great whisky salesman (he built Old Schenley's sales in Boston by passing out Blarney-stone rings to barkeeps as a sales incentive), had begun drinking so heavily that clients were complaining, and the agency had lost three big accounts. Moreover, the defendants charged that Jones paid $400 a month to two of his sisters for "premium ideas" which were seldom used by the agency, and $8,000 a year to a brother, Alfred Jones, who ran a Connecticut chicken farm. In his own testimony, Jones admitted that he was a heavy drinker, but insisted that the chicken farm came in handy for entertaining clients.

Last week in Manhattan, a jury awarded Adman Jones $300,000 damages. Jones hailed the verdict as a precedent that would "make officers of any advertising agency think twice before stealing the top accounts."

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