The Buffalo office was headed by Frank Fellows, formerly employed by The Charles H. Fuller Company.
[10][11] In that year, The Advertisers' Agency was succeeded by E. St. Elmo Lewis, Incorporated with a capital stock of $50,000.
[18] In June 1910, Lewis was elected president of the newly founded National Association of Advertising Managers at their first regular meeting at Hotel Pontchartrain in Detroit.
[20] In September 1914, he became vice-president and general manager of the Art Metal Construction Company in Jamestown (NY).
[23] Afterwards, Lewis worked for National Services, Inc. in Detroit as counsellor in consumer and trade relations,[24] and, as of 1931, as vice-president and editorial director of the Keystone Publishing Company in Philadelphia.
[25] In 1932, Lewis joined a newly formed organization called Advisory Management Corporation in Philadelphia as chief of staff of the marketing division.
In the early 1940s, the couple moved from Detroit to St. Petersburg, Pinellas County (FL), "on doctors' orders", as the Highway Traveler noted in 1946, "to take care of an overworked heart."
[30] Since 1925 when The Psychology of Selling and Advertising by Edward K. Strong, Jr. was published, it became commonplace to attribute the authorship of the AIDA model to Lewis.
According to Strong, Lewis formulated the slogan attract attention, maintain interest, create desire in 1898, adding later the fourth term get action.
[31] The following table summarizes Lewis' evolving idea concerning the principal functions of advertising: The earliest, rudimentary discussion of advertising principles appeared in a column which Lewis wrote for The Inland Printer under the pen name "Musgrove".
Its appearance was scheduled for Fall 1907,[34] but was postponed when a financial crisis, the so-called Panic of 1907, hit the United States.
The original components from the 4-part slogan attract attention, maintain interest, create desire, get action were scattered around the pertinent chapters on advertising principles.
As a third requirement, the advertisement "must convince the reader of the reasonableness and correctness of its claims and arguments – it must make him consciously assent to its logic and conclusions.
Lewis contrasted the schools of scientific management by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Harrington Emerson and called for the "development of the whole man for the whole business": The emotional and temperamental sides of the Thinker and Doer are just as much facts to be reckoned with in business as the items in the physical inventory, therefore, the individuality of the unit must be recognized.
[49]In 1911, Lewis gave a speech before the American Bankers Association, titled "The Savings Idea and the People," advocating that savings bankers adopt a policy of "aggressive conservation," wherein they recognize that in order to make savings a national trait, they must acknowledge that "they are here as an economic necessity, representing the principle of the conservation of human effort, and that in order to conserve they have a duty for which they must fight, educate, plead and teach the people..."[50] The March 1905 issue of Ad sense narrates the story of how Lewis' life was once threatened by an unknown "would-be-murderer": Several weeks ago some illy disposed person sprinkled arsenic in the food which was being served in the Alhambra cafe and several deaths were nearly recorded.
Providence again intervened, and Mr. Lewis and his fellow residents escaped with their lives and several pair of pajamas.
All personal property, however, was destroyed by the fire, and the managing editor of the Business Man's Magazine was so unfortunate as to lose his magnificent French bulldog.
""The Peirce School of Philadelphia is the first important American business college to introduce the practical study of advertising as part of its curriculum.
Lewis has been traveling for the past six months, since his resignation as director of publications and advertising manager for the National Cash Register Co., studying business conditions and arranging with well-known writers and conspicuous figures in the business world, for special features for The Book-Keeper during the coming year.""E.
St. Elmo Lewis has become identified with the organization of National Services Inc., Book building tower, Detroit.
Lewis is so far a follower of the great exponent of pragmatism as to apply the what-is-it worth test to all that he reads and writes.