E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. Advertising Dept.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Advertising Dept. was formed in September 1921, when the company was reorganized with a decentralized structure. Prior to that time, advertising had been a division of the Sales Dept., but when the sales function was decentralized, a central Advertising Dept. became necessary to coordinate advertising activities across product lines. The Advertising Dept. was renamed the Marketing Communications Dept. on January 1, 1980.

Du Pont's first advertisement was an item placed in a newspaper by E. I. du Pont in October 1804 announcing the availability of his gunpowder. In 1819, du Pont began advertising in the Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser. This campaign proved so successful that he began an extensive handbill advertising program. During the nineteenth century, however, the company's sales grew without the need for much advertising, but as DuPont began to diversify in the twentieth century, more advertising was needed. Around 1909, a director, William Coyne, asked Du Pont employee George H. Kerr to survey the advertising and publicity practices of other large industrial companies. Knerr engaged Samuel W. Long, a Philadelphia advertising and publicity agent, and spent about a year collecting and analysing the data. In April 1911, an Advertising Division was established within the Sales Dept., under George Frank Lord, formerly of the J. Walter Thompson agency. S. W. Long was engaged to handle publicity on retainer. Long mostly dealt with powder and dynamite advertising but also dealt with public relations issues emanating from the 1911-12 antitrust prosecution. Publicity was spun off to a new Publicity Bureau in 1916.

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