George Gallup, born in Jefferson, Iowa, on Nov. 18, 1901, got into research field when he was an editor of Daily Iowan of the University of Iowa and later an interviewer for D'Arcy Advertising in 1922. He began to get interested in way people read certain stories and how many and which ones they actually read.

Gallup adopted the startling device of confronting a reader with the whole newspaper and asking him exactly what he liked and did not like about it. This gave him the material for a Ph.D. thesis, “An objective method for determining the reader interest in newspapers.” His thesis was based on a survey of the editorial and advertisement content of The Des Moines Register & Tribune and he found out that most readers preferred comics to the front page, feature stories to news.

After receiving a Ph.D. in 1928 from Iowa, Dr. Gallup later taught journalism at Drake University, Northwestern University, and Columbia University. While he was teaching in those universities, he had the chance to run reader survey for half a dozen or more top U.S. newspapers.

At Northwestern University in 1931, his magazine readership survey on male-female copy appeal ratings (economy, efficiency, sex, vanity, and quality) drew Rubicam’s attention and Gallup then joined Young &Rubicam in 1932. Gallup recalled “Raymond Rubicam was far more interested intellectually in how advertising works than the other people I talked to and he offered me the complete freedom that I didn’t think was possible in the business world.”

Gallup stayed at Y & R for sixteen years and never regretted leaving academic life. “I had all the money I wanted available for any kind of an experiment that I wanted to conduct,” he said later. “I was not asked to do a single thing that was not completely and entirely ethical.” The addition of Gallup made Y & R unique in the business: an agency with a reputation for sharp, original copy plus professional, usable research; advertising as both art and science. Billings kept growing regardless of the Depression, from $6 million in 1927 to $12 million in 1935 and $22 million in 1937.

In the 1920s and 1930s Gallup invented various research methods and procedures to measure advertising and copy effectiveness, media, and audience profile. These are “Reading and Noting” method (recognition) and the “Impact” method (recall), as well as the telephone coincidental survey, diary, and metered-household methods for measuring radio listenership.

In addition, in 1935, while he was in Young & Rubicam, Gallup started the American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO). In the first election poll in 1936 and other early surveys, Gallup applied market research techniques to the study of public opinion on social and political issues. The AIPO developed rapidly into a research organization conducting a variety of research surveys for academic social researchers, private industry, new media, and political groups. Later in 1958 it was renamed Gallup Organization Inc..

In 1939, Gallup founded Audience Research Inc. and conducted various audience researches including movie testing and radio star rating.

George Gallup was a man of an unusual integrity. Even though he was deeply involved in presidential election poll, he himself never vote and worked for any political contender. His career was a triumph of intelligence and character. Gallup was an optimistic man and considered as “affirmative by disposition, forthright and open-minded, generous of spirit and full of humor” by his colleagues (Cantril, 1984).

He received five awards for outstanding achievement, including the Advertising Gold Medal Award (1964) and the AMA’s Parlin Award (1965). In 1977, he was inducted into The Advertising Hall of Fame.
He died in Tschingel, Switzerland, on July 26, 1984.