A student, innovator, patrician and educator, Stanley Resor made numerous contributions to the standards of advertising excellence in the United States and around the world.
Resor entered advertising in 1904 with the Proctor and Collier Advertising Agency in Cincinnatiand in 1908 opened the Cincinnati office of the J. Walter Thompson Agency. In 1912 he moved to New York as the vice president and general manager of J. Walter Thompson. and in 1916 he purchased the company with a few associates. Before his death in 1962 the agency had grown to be the largest in the world.
Resor was one of the founders of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and served as its president from 1923 to 1924. He was a leader in establishing the Audit Bureau of Circulations and the National Outdoor Advertising Bureau. In 1949 Resor received the Gold Medal as "Advertising Man of the Year."
The scientific market research he inaugurated during World War I was perhaps the first of its kind done by an advertising agency. In the late 1920s, at great risk, he established a worldwide network of J. Walter Thompson offices to handle General Motors and other international accounts with American standards of excellence. He surrounded himself with people of the highest caliber and showed them how to do better than their best.
In an editorial at the time of his death, Advertising Age wrote, " Resor, more perhaps than any other man, gave advertising direction, cohesion and stability."