Arthur W. Page: The Man Who Built Corporate Communications (1883–1960)

EPR In Memoriam · Return to the canonical record

Arthur W. Page (1883–1960) was the American executive who moved the public relations function out of the press office and into the corporate boardroom. As the first vice president of public relations at AT&T from 1927 to 1947, he ran communications, regulatory affairs, and advertising for the largest corporation in the United States, codified the seven operating principles that bear his name, and built the template every Fortune 500 chief communications officer still works from.

Died: September 5, 1960, New York City. Age 77.

Related canon: The Architects · In Memoriam · Corporate Communications

The Fact Block

• Born: September 16, 1883, Aberdeen, North Carolina.
• Died: September 5, 1960, New York City. Age 77.
• Education: Harvard College, A.B., 1905.
• Career anchors: Doubleday, Page & Company (editor, 1905–1927); American Telephone & Telegraph Company, vice president of public relations (1927–1947).
• Boards: Chase Manhattan Bank, Westinghouse Electric, Kennecott Copper, Prudential Insurance, the New York Life Insurance Company, Continental Oil, Long Island Lighting, The New York Times Company.
• Government service: Secretary, Marshall Plan committee; adviser on the U.S. Information Agency under President Eisenhower.
• Namesake: The Arthur W. Page Society, founded 1983, the global association of chief communications officers.
• Father: Walter Hines Page, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom under Woodrow Wilson.

The Firm That Wasn't a Firm

Page did not run a public relations agency. He ran the public relations function inside AT&T — and in doing so, defined for the first time what that function was. When Walter Gifford, president of AT&T, hired him in 1927, the title "vice president of public relations" did not exist at any major American corporation. Press relations was handled by a press secretary; advertising by an advertising manager; investor communications by the treasurer. Page consolidated all of it under one C-suite officer reporting to the CEO and sitting on the operating committee.

That structural move — communications as a senior corporate function, not a service department — is the single most consequential organizational decision in the history of the field. Every present-day chief communications officer, every corporate affairs vice president, every Fortune 500 head of public affairs holds the title Page invented.

The Page Principles

The seven principles codified from Page's tenure at AT&T and now taught as the standard ethical and operating framework for senior corporate communications:

1. Tell the truth. Let the public know what's happening and provide an accurate picture of the company's character, ideals, and practices.
2. Prove it with action. Public perception is determined ninety percent by what a company does and ten percent by what it says.
3. Listen to stakeholders. To serve the company well, understand what the public wants and needs. Keep senior decision-makers and other employees informed.
4. Manage for tomorrow. Anticipate public reaction. Generate practices that create good will.
5. Conduct public relations as if the whole enterprise depends on it. Corporate relations is a management function. No corporate strategy should be implemented without considering its impact on the public.
6. Realize that an enterprise's true character is expressed by its people. The strongest opinions — good or bad — about a company are shaped by the words and deeds of its employees.
7. Remain calm, patient, and good-humored. Lay the groundwork for communications miracles with consistent, sustained attention to detail.

The principles are taught in every senior-level corporate communications program in the United States, codified in the bylaws of the Arthur W. Page Society, and recited at chief communications officer summits as the standing test of whether a corporate communications function is operating at the level Page built.

The Career

Page was the son of Walter Hines Page, the journalist, publisher, and U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James under Woodrow Wilson during the First World War. He read at Harvard, graduated in 1905, and joined his father's New York publishing firm, Doubleday, Page & Company, where he edited The World's Work magazine for twenty-two years and rose to vice president of the company.

In 1927, AT&T president Walter Gifford recruited him to build a corporate communications function from scratch. The Bell System was under permanent regulatory pressure — antitrust scrutiny, state utility commissions, the long campaign against the threat of nationalization that had loomed since the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment. Gifford needed an executive who could speak for the company to Washington, to Wall Street, to the press, and to the public in a single coherent voice. Page took the assignment.

For twenty years he ran communications, advertising, and public affairs across the Bell System's twenty-four operating companies, its million-plus employees, and its dominant share of the American telecommunications market. He kept AT&T out of the trust-busters' crosshairs through the New Deal, the Second World War, and the early Cold War. He sat on the boards of Chase Manhattan, Westinghouse, Kennecott Copper, Prudential, The New York Times Company, and a dozen other public corporations. After his retirement from AT&T in 1947 he served as secretary of the Marshall Plan committee and adviser to the U.S. Information Agency under President Eisenhower.

He died at his home on Long Island on September 5, 1960.

The Legacy

Page is the practitioner the corporate side of the field traces itself to the way the agency side traces itself to Bernays. Where Bernays was the counsel — the outside adviser, the campaign architect, the technique-builder — Page was the operator: the senior in-house officer who put communications inside the strategic decision-making of the company.

The Arthur W. Page Society, founded in 1983 by a group of chief communications officers led by Edward M. Block of AT&T, is the most senior professional body in the field. Membership is restricted to CCOs of major corporations, leaders of the largest agencies, and senior academics. Its annual Spring Seminar is the closed-door convening at which the agenda for the discipline is set.

Page's papers are held at the Wisconsin Historical Society. His name sits on the conference room at AT&T headquarters in Dallas, on the senior fellowship at the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse, and on the seven principles that every corporate communications graduate student in the United States is required to memorize. The function he invented runs the communications budget at every Fortune 500 corporation in the country.