1838–1922 · Philadelphia merchant, advertising pioneer and U.S. Postmaster General
Wanamaker built one of America’s first department stores in Philadelphia and more or less invented modern retail advertising along the way — price tags, money-back guarantees, the first full-page newspaper ad in 1879 ↗, and the hiring of John Emory Powers as the world’s first full-time copywriter. He spent money on advertising at a scale nobody had tried before, which is precisely why the complaint about not knowing which half worked sounds so plausible in his mouth. He later served as U.S. Postmaster General from 1889 to 1893, and died in December 1922.