Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay

Lester Wunderman is an advertising legend, the pioneering father of direct marketing, to whom we owe the ubiquity of the American Express card, the creation of the Columbia Record Club, and the high profile of L.L. Bean. The visionary marketing techniques Wunderman conceived and perfected over his long and brilliant career transformed the advertising industry and will shape the interactive marketplace of the future. Here is his own story, in his own words, of how he did it – how he learned to make advertising pay.

Direct marketing is a strategy for putting manufacturers directly in touch with consumers – the blueprint for the "disintermediation" of the digital world. Back in the fifties and sixties, while other ad agencies disdained what was then called mail order selling, Lester Wunderman used his instincts and skills to revolutionize the industry. He was responsible for a number of firsts: He introduced bound-in subscription cards for magazines, founded the first "virtual store," introduced pre-printed newspaper inserts, and persuaded Time Inc. to use an 800 number to sell their magazines. Today, direct marketing accounts for 15 percent of all retail sales worldwide.

Twenty-five years before the Internet was invented, in a now famous speech at MIT, Wunderman described the sales relationship of the future as "interactive." In tomorrow's electronic marketplace, the interactive techniques he pioneered will account for the great majority of sales worldwide. In a groundbreaking final chapter, Wunderman looks forward to marketing in the "post-present." Anyone with an interest in the future of advertising and selling would do well to listen to this remarkable, wise and wonderfully entertaining pioneer.

The new version has been augmented with a new final chapter on the impact of the Internet on direct marketing, includes a new Consumer Communications Bill of Rights, and has been statistically updated regarding the size and scope of Direct Marketing.

Lester Wunderman, consultant, professor, author and photographer, is chairman emeritus and founder of Wunderman. After an apprenticeship at several agencies, Mr. Wunderman joined Maxwell Sackheim & Company in 1947, where he became executive vice president. In 1958, he founded Wunderman, Ricotta & Kline, now known as Wunderman. Mr. Wunderman has received countless awards for his marketing innovations and has been named to the Direct Marketing Association's Hall of Fame. In 2004, he received the first-ever Direct Marketing Educational Foundation's Vision Award in recognition of his uniquely creative and pioneering vision within the direct marketing industry. He has served as director of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and of the Advertising Council. Mr. Wunderman's collection of 50 photographs and Dogon art is part of permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his artwork is on display at 13 museums around the world.