Lasker held that if an agency could write copy which sold the product, nothing else was needed. For years he refused to employ an art director, and when he finally gave in it was only because he had observed that illustrated advertisements were easier to sell to clients. His attitude to research was equally contemptuous. He used to say that he was perfectly able to give his clients advice ‘without having to lose six months going out to do research, only to come back and tell us that a jackass has two ears’. He never had what is called today a ‘marketing’ department. His intuitive genius for marketing can be illustrated in a story he told about the early days of women’s sanitary napkins. ‘When the Kotex people came to us, the business wasn’t growing as fast as they thought it should. We didn’t have to make investigations among millions of women. Just a few of us talked to our wives and asked them if they used Kotex, and we found they didn’t, and in almost every case it was because they didn’t like to ask the druggist for it. So we developed the simple idea of putting plain wrapped packages on the dealer’s counter so that you could walk into your dealer and walk away with a wrapped package without embarrassment. The business boomed by leaps and bounds.’ By dispensing with marketers, art directors and researchers, Lasker saved so much money that he was able to make a profit of 7 per cent – probably the world’s record. If an agency makes more than 1 per cent today, it is exceptional. He ran Lord & Thomas as a dictatorship. ‘As you all know,’ he told his staff, ‘I am the owner of this business and therefore I decide the policies. Lord & Thomas is the trade name for Albert D. Lasker practicing advertising.’ He owned 95 per cent of the shares. After he retired he said that he had never attended a directors’ meeting and did not think that one had ever been held. He hired able men, paid them well and trained them well. He used to say, ‘I can get more out of people than they have in them.’ But the turnover was ferocious. At one point the heads of nine major agencies were Lasker alumni. He used to say, ’I make my men so good that I can’t 1 keep ‘em.’ Before writing his biography of Lasker, John Gunther asked some of his people what they thought had been his greatest qualities.