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.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. The DuPont Corporate Plans Department is primarily responsible for coordinating all of the company’s strategic business planning activities. The records of DuPont Corporate Plans are fragmentary in nature and document only a small segment of the department’s responsibilities. These records are arranged into two series: Multi-client reports and Silverstone tracking study. The bulk of the material is contained in Series I and consists of multi-client reports, which are marketing studies prepared by outside consulting firms.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. The External Affairs Department of the DuPont Company was created on January 1, 1986 by the merger of the Marketing Communications and Public Affairs departments. The records of DuPont External Affairs are divided into two series that reflect the department's principal functions--advertising and public affairs. A large portion of the collection consists of retail sales profiles and trend reports that include background information, research proposals, cost estimates, survey questionnaires, and related correspondence.

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.

Ernest Dichter (1907-1991) was one of the pioneers in consumer motivational research. He started his own consulting business in 1946. It was incorporated in New York as the Institute for Research in Mass Motivations, Inc. in 1952 and renamed the Institute for Motivational Research, Inc. in 1955. This collection consists of photographs, negatives, slides, contact sheets, and audio cassettes.

Joseph M. Rule (1922-2017) was a chemist and industrial marketing analyst in the Marketing Research Division of the Development Department at the DuPont Company. Later he became senior community affairs consultant in the Public Affairs Department. This small collection consists of materials from Rule's work for the Marketing Research Department. The materials include market research reports, DuPont Elastomers architectural files, and advertisements.

Commonly referred to as simply "Seagram" or "Seagram's," the Seagram Company, Ltd. was for a time the largest producer and distributor of distilled spirits in the world. The records of Seagram and its subsidiaries trace the company's transformation from a small business run by Samuel Bronfman to a diversified multi-national corporation.