AAF Dallas

Our History

What’s done is history. What’s ahead is challenge. In pausing to celebrate its 100th anniversary by tracing the course of what has happened to date, the Dallas Advertising League can point with pride to the many significant accomplishments of the past in the lives and works of the members who created the League and made it grow.

By reviewing the past, the Dallas Advertising League can find inspiration and guidance for ever-increasing achievement in the future. This is not a full chronicle of that century of progress, only a brief look at some of the ways the Dallas Ad League has helped shape the enormous economic prosperity experienced in Dallas, and the impact made throughout the American Advertising Federation and District 10.

Nine of the DAL’s eleven charter members gathered on June 17, 1908, planning to work for safer and saner advertising in Dallas. Includes George Baker, first president, along with Gus Thomasson; Fred Johnson of Johnson Printing Co.; Albert Chaney, Titche-Goettinger Ad Manager; Richard Haughton, Founder of Haughton Brothers Printers; James Kirkland, Ad Manager Sanger Brothers; and Doc Wynn, Owner of Dallas’ first advertising agency.

In the Beginning
Shortly after the turn of the century, eleven Dallas businessmen gathered with ideas to promote Dallas and to work for better values in advertising. They called themselves the Dallas Advertising League. The group stated that one of its main purposes was “to suppress fake and scheme advertising,” because fraudulent advertising was running rampant in Dallas at the time. They intended to improve the quality of advertising in Dallas and inspire confidence of the public in advertising’s truthfulness.

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