Better Business Bureau history

The first call to a BBB for help in the preparation of advertising copy to comply with the widely held concept of truth in advertising came in 1914.

Also as valid as the day it was written is this portion of a National Vigilance Commission report dated May 25, 1915:

In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson addressing a Philadelphia gathering of the advertising men who had taken leadership in launching the Vigilance committee movement, said:

The companies and the Committee soon realized that the problem required industry wide action, so the American Pharmaceutical Association took the first step to create a set of voluntary advertising standards which were distributed to media nationally in 1917.

In 1920, Florida land speculations were robbing people of millions of dollars.

The BBBs inaugurated a number of popular slogans over the years to focus public attention on problems in the marketplace. "Before You Invest - Investigate", the most familiar, is attributed to Cleveland merchant Salmon P. Halle in 1923.

In 1925 President Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce; praised the evolution of the truth in advertising movement and the growth of the Better Business Bureaus:

The BBB movement became international in 1928 with the founding of the first Canadian bureau.

In a review published in “Editor & Publisher” for November 14, 1936, is the following appraisal:

Marshall Mott, former manager of the Hartford BBB and retired president of the Cleveland BBB, wrote in 1939:

In 1947, for example, BBB messages were aimed at Western Germany through "Voice of America" broadcasts directing Germans to contact reputable relief organizations rather than flourishing groups out to fleece a crippled citizenry.

Especially significant was the Central Registry program launched in 1948 with the support of leading magazine subscription agencies.

A parallel program was launched in the subscription book industry in 1950.

Not until 1959 did another foreign country establish a BBB, that one being in Mexico City.

Then the "Advertising Code of American Business" was adopted in 1964, sponsored jointly by the Bureaus and the Advertising Federation of America.

By 1965, consumers would have been justified had they believed that BBB was an abbreviation for the state of the Bureau’s phone lines….Busy…Busy…Busy.

In 1970 the local Bureaus and members of the National Better Business Bureau formed the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

Established in 1973, the arbitration program aims to settle disagreements between businesses and customers without the use of lawyers and courts.