Harrison King McCann (November 4, 1880 – December 20, 1962), was the founder of the H. K. McCann Company. H. K. McCann Company was an advertising agency that, as

McCann Erickson McCann, formerly McCann Erickson, is an American global advertising agency network, with offices in 120 countries. McCann is part of McCann Worldgroup, along with several other agencies, including direct digital marketing agency MRM//McCann, expe ...

, grew to become the world's largest with a global network of offices in more than 130 countries, providing advertising campaigns for brands including

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co-f ...

(Esso, Exxon),

Vaseline Vaseline ()Also pronounced with the main stress on the last syllable . is an American brand of petroleum jelly-based products owned by transnational company Unilever. Products include plain petroleum jelly and a selection of skin creams, soa ...

Beech-Nut Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation is a baby food company owned by the Swiss branded consumer-goods firm Hero Group. History Beech-Nut's roots go back to 1891, to the Mohawk Valley town of Canajoharie, New York. Raymond P. Lipe, along with his ...

, Del Monte,

Nabisco Nabisco (, abbreviated from the earlier name National Biscuit Company) is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International. Nabisco's ...

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...

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, L’Oréal,

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R.J. Reynolds Richard Joshua Reynolds (July 20, 1850 – July 29, 1918) was an American businessman and founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The son of a tobacco farmer, he worked for his father and attended Emory & Henry College from 1868 to 1870, ...

and MasterCard.

Biography

McCann was born in Maine on November 4, 1880 to a New England family that had settled in New Hampshire in the seventeenth century. In 1902 he graduated from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. When Bowdoin was chartered in 1794, Maine was still a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college offers 34 majors and 36 minors, as well as several joint eng ...

Brunswick, Maine Brunswick is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. The population was 21,756 at the 2020 United States Census. Part of the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan area, Brunswick is home to Bowdoin College, the Bowdoin Intern ...

, where he had worked on the student newspaper and been leader of the mandolin club. During his high school and college years he worked for Hiram Ricker & Sons, hotel proprietors in Poland Spring, initially as a bellboy and later as salesman for

Poland Spring Poland Spring is a brand of bottled water, produced in Poland, Maine. It is named after the original natural spring in the town of Poland, Maine it was drawn from. Today it is a subsidiary of BlueTriton Brands, formerly Nestlé Waters North Ameri ...

water. This job took him to the Poland Springs New York office. Once in New York, McCann switched jobs, joining the Amsterdam Advertising Agency as copywriter in 1903. In the same year he was offered a position by the

New York Telephone Company The New York Telephone Company (NYTel) was organized in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the American Bell Telephone Company. Predecessor companies The Telephone Company of New York was formed under franchise in 1876. The princi ...

, and put in charge of an experimental campaign to discover if advertising could prevent the company from losing customers to smaller competitors. By 1910, McCann was successfully running an in-house department of 100 staff. McCann's work for the New York Telephone Company attracted the attention of the Standard Oil Company, who recruited him to lead their in-house advertising department. When the US Government ordered the break-up of the Standard Oil Company on monopoly grounds, McCann formed his own agency with Canadian efficiency expert Herbert Newton Casson to provide ad continuity. The H. K. McCann Company opened its doors on Broadway, New York in 1912, with Standard Oil as its first account. By its second year it was handling over $200,000 worth of business. A network of offices across North America quickly followed. In 1928, McCann opened its first European offices in Berlin, London and Paris. In 1930, McCann merged with Alfred Erickson's agency to form McCann-Erickson. Harrison McCann died on December 20, 1962 in a car crash in

Old Westbury, New York Old Westbury is a village in the Towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 4,671 at the 2010 census. The Incorporated Village of Old Westbury ...

Legacy

As a distinguished

alumnus, Harrison King McCann is the namesake of a named professorial chair in the college's English department. Bowdoin professors endowed with this honor in more recent years include: * Marilyn Reizbaum, Ph.D., Harrison King McCann Professor of English * Franklin G. Burroughs, Ph.D., Harrison King McCann Research Professor of the English Language Emeritus and author of nonfiction books and essays * Barbara Jeanne Kaster, Ph.D., Harrison King McCann Professor of Communication in the Department of English Emerita

Sources

# Herbert Newton Casson "The Story of My Life" 1931 Efficiency Magazine, London page 164-5

References

External links

Advertising Hall of Fame
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCann, Harry American advertising executives 1880 births 1962 deaths Businesspeople from Maine Bowdoin College alumni 20th-century American businesspeople