Theodore Lewis Bates (September 11, 1901 – May 30, 1972) was an American

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

executive who founded a worldwide

advertising agency An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...

that bears his name: Ted Bates Inc.

Biography

Born in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

, Bates attended Phillips-Andover Academy, then graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1924. While at Yale he joined

Delta Kappa Epsilon Delta Kappa Epsilon (), commonly known as ''DKE'' or ''Deke'', is one of the oldest fraternities in the United States, with fifty-six active chapters and five active colonies across North America. It was founded at Yale College in 1844 by fifteen ...

fraternity. He founded Ted Bates & Co. in 1940, which evolved into the 21st-century advertising agency

Bates 141 Bates CHI & Partners (formerly Bates 141 and Bates) is an advertising and marketing agency and a member of the WPP Group. History The Bates brand was born in 1940, when Ted Bates opened his first office, Ted Bates Inc., in New York. Ted even ...

. His empire launched in Asia in the early 1960s after acquiring a stake in Cathay Advertising from George Patterson, an Australian advertising executive. Cathay Advertising was used by Bates as a vehicle to drive expansion in the region so that by the late 1960s, Ted Bates Inc. was operating in

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estima ...

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = '' Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , su ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Personal life

Bates died on May 30, 1972; services were held at St. James' Episcopal Church in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

Legacy

In 1982, the

American Advertising Federation The American Advertising Federation (AAF), headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the oldest national advertising trade association in the United States. The AAF also has 15 district operations, each located in and representing a different region o ...

(AAF) inducted Bates with Charles H. Brower and

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon Bernice Bowles "Fitz" Fitz-Gibbon (September 6, 1894 – February 22, 1982) was an American advertising executive and a pioneer in retail advertising, working at Marshall Field's, Macy's, Gimbels and Wanamaker's. She was inducted into the Adver ...

to the

Advertising Hall of Fame The Advertising Hall of Fame, operated by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), began in 1948 as a result of a proposal by the New York Ad Club and its president, Andrew Haire, to the Advertising Federation of America, the predecessor organiza ...

. His creative partner, advertising maverick

Rosser Reeves Rosser Reeves (10 September 1910 – 24 January 1984) was an American advertising executive and pioneer of television advertising; Reeves generated millions for his clients. The Ted Bates agency, where he rose to chairman, exists today as Bates ...

, described the reasons for Bates' success at the induction:

There are two things not commonly known which I want to put on the record today. Very early on at one fell swoop, Ted Bates gave away 90 percent of his agency to his key people. When I asked him why, he said, 'Rosser, I would rather own 10 percent of a success than 100 percent of a failure.' And that leads to the other thing. By making us rich and therefore making us work like demons, Ted built an agency that for the first 26 consecutive years did not lose a client...Advertising Hall of Fame
(official site)

Notes

References

*Staff report (June 1, 1972). Ted Bates, Ad Agency Founder, Dies. ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''
Ted Bates
AAF Hall of Fame listing 1901 births 1972 deaths American advertising executives 20th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1900s-stub