JWT Adds 8 to Board in Bid to Bolster Chief

Troubled J. Walter Thompson Co., whose two top executives were fired over the past week, named eight additional executives to its board Friday in a move that even the company says was designed to bolster support for the beleaguered chairman of JWT Group, its parent company.

The additions balloon the size of Thompson’s board to 26 members. Most of the new directors are long-time Thompson executives and all are regarded as “strong supporters” of Don Johnston, chairman of J. Walter Thompson and its parent company JWT Group, a company spokesman said.

The move came Friday at a quickly assembled board meeting that brought in Thompson executives from around the world.

Besides the board additions, the meeting was “a chance for Don to say that some unusual circumstances might have put us back, but it’s time to move ahead,” said James K. Agnew, a board member and executive vice president of J. Walter Thompson’s West Coast operations.

“This is the kind of stuff that happens on TV,” an executive at one competing New York firm commented Friday. “It’s hard to believe it’s really happening at J. Walter Thompson.”

Those named to the board on Friday were Marlene Hore, 42, vice chairman and national creative director for J. Walter Thompson/Canada; William M. Lane, 41, general manager of the San Francisco office of J. Walter Thompson USA; Allen Thomas, 42, deputy chairman of JWT/London; Miles Colebrook, 39, managing director of J. Walter Thompson/London; James H. Foster, 53, president of a J. Walter Thompson division, Brouillard Communications; Terence D. Martin, 43, executive vice president of finance for JWT Group; Kenneth R. Rogers, 40, executive vice president at J. Walter Thompson USA, and Peter A. Schweitzer, 47, executive vice president of J. Walter Thompson/Detroit.