Finding Aids

Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn Inc. (BBDO) is a worldwide advertising agency network headquartered in New York City. The company began in 1891 as the George Batten Company. In 1928, it merged with Barton, Durstine & Osborn. With locations in eighty-one countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, UAE, and seven in the United States, BBDO is among the world’s most awarded advertising agencies. The records cover the entire span of BBDO’s existence, beginning with the George Batten Company in 1891. The collection includes advertisement tear sheets, films, ledgers, marketing reports, personnel files, photographs, press coverage, publications, research reports, slides, and speeches.

Charles H. DeMirjian (1925-) was a packaging design manager with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. Records are primarily related to the marketing success and issues realted to Corian, DuPont Car Care products, Zerex, as well as Duco and Lucite paints.

The DuPont Theatre, originally called The Playhouse, presents professional theatrical productions from Broadway and other notable venues in downtown Wilmington, Delaware since 1913. The Playhouse was the concept of three top executives of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont Company) who realized that Wilmington needed a facility for cultural as well as business purposes. The DuPont Theatre records consist primarily of public relations and advertising materials related to the theater's operation. As such, they present a sequence of changing tastes in popular entertainment in a medium-sized American city.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly known as the DuPont Company. It was established in 1802 and began by manufacturing gunpowder, later moving into chemical compounds. At the beginning of the twentieth century, DuPont had the need for more advertising as the company began expanding its product line beyond gunpowders and explosives. Between 1907 and 1909, an Advertising Division was formed within the Sales Department; a separate Advertising Department was established in 1921. This collection consists of background research files on ad campaigns run in individual industrial departments for various products and to promote the company as a whole.

Lippincott & Margulies, Inc., and its successor Lippincott Mercer is a major international design consultancy specializing in corporate identity, image, and marketing. The records consist of a set of the company's magazine, Design Sense.

Nicholas F. Pensiero (1918-2003) worked in the Marketing Division of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), a leading American electronics company. The papers comprise a portion of Pensiero’s files retained by him after retirement in 1984. They include a variety of pieces relating to the history of RCA and its predecessor, the Victor Talking Machine Company. There are memoirs (copies) of two RCA engineers, an advertising scrapbook dating from 1938 to 1942, and a set of dust jackets for 78rpm records dating from 1912 to 1938.

The Provident Mutual Life Insurance Company was organized by a group of Philadelphia Quakers in 1865, and by World War I it had become one of the largest life insurance companies in the country with a strong presence in the New York and Boston markets. The records of the Provident Mutual Insurance Company of Philadelphia are a collection of fragments assembled by the Advertising Department in connection with the company's centennial history.

Raymond Loewy (1893–1986) was one of the most well know industrial designers during the middle decades of the twentieth century. This collections consist of the Loewy's personal papers, business records, and materials generated and maintained by Loewy's New York Public Relations Department.