Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay [Anglais] [Broché]

Lester Wunderman's Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay truly is both informative and entertaining. It combines an extraordinary personal history of "direct marketing" with a remarkably candid look at the field's most acclaimed practitioner. Written in an easy-going and deliberately persuasive style obviously honed during Wunderman's six decades in the trenches, the book shows his skill developing and gaining acceptance as he creates revolutionary advertising programs for future corporate stalwarts like the Columbia Record Club and American Express. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Born in a Bronx tenement, Wunderman started his own advertising agency with his older brother in 1939, at the age of 19. It went under two years later. With a never-say-die attitude, he learned the ropes, and by 1959, Wunderman, Ricotta & Kline (WRK), which he had founded a year earlier, was the world's largest agency specializing in mail-order advertising. A collector of African art, conversant with Spinoza and Marshall McLuhan, Wunderman credits his 1972 meeting with the chief of Mali's Dogon tribe as the key to his understanding of kinship and power-sharing-insights that led him to merge WRK (now Wunderman Cato Johnson, which he chairs) with a larger general agency, Young & Rubicam. Highly skimpy on personal detail, this career-oriented autobiography is a seasoned pro's detailed casebook of direct-marketing hits and misses. Wunderman's campaigns helped launch the American Express card, boosted Time Inc.'s magazine division circulation, devised interactive media to sell Lincoln Continentals and made the zip code an accepted part of the postal system. His account of these and other legendary feats is high-energy. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Wunderman has been working in advertising since World War II and is currently the chair of his own direct-marketing firm. In this memoir, he describes his career and how he created the concept of direct marketing. He began by doing mail orders in newspapers and magazines in a small firm before moving on to create direct-marketing campaigns. Wunderman helped develop both the Columbia Record Club and the Book of the Month Club. He examines how his campaigns for American Express, Ford, and Time magazine, for example, were initiated and how successful they were. He offers a well-written look into the field of advertising and direct marketing that would be a welcome addition to any business collection.?Joel Jones, Kansas City P.L., Mo.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

At one time, direct marketing meant door-to-door selling. Over time, it evolved to include party-plan selling and mail order. Now with interactive at-home shopping via cable television and the Internet, direct marketing has new, unlimited potential. Wunderman has been called the grandfather of direct marketing. His firm is the largest direct-marketing organization in the world, with offices in 36 countries, and Wunderman has worked with such clients as Time and Columbia Records. With an advertiser's braggadocio, he takes credit for the success of the American Express card and the zip code and for the invention of the magazine insert and even the term direct marketing. Filled with tips throughout, Wunderman's book tells how he did it all. Even at age 76, he has his eye to the future as he touts the "brand experience" and "contact strategies" that will allow him to take advantage of the electronic marketplace. Given the popularity of similar material, public libraries should consider multiple copies. David Rouse --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

A thoroughly engaging and informative memoir from the man who did the most to create direct marketing, an ad-industry arm that now generates annual volume exceeding $1 trillion in the US alone. Looking back on his long, eventful, and productive life, the Bronx-born Wunderman (who turned 76 this year) ruefully notes he did not get off to a particularly promising start. Indeed, the ad agency the would-be wunderkind (whose precarious finances had obliged him to quit college) and his brother launched toward the end of the Depression quickly failed. Learning from his mistakes, he quickly apprenticed himself to some of the savviest practitioners in the direct-mail field; with nary a mention of the J (for ``junk'') word, the author recalls successfully promoting such varied goods and services as the Acousticon hearing aid, Jackson & Perkins flora (notably roses), Columbia's LP Record Club, and a decidedly dubious book entitled I Was Hitler's Doctor. Setting up shop with two partners in 1958, Wunderman kept most of his old clients and attracted a host of new ones (Time-Life Books, Ford, American Express, et al.). With the help of computer technology, he continued to refine direct-marketing doctrine, thereby taking the catalog/mail-order business to the next level. His prospering Manhattan firm joined forces with Young & Rubicam during the early 1970s, affording the author access to the resources needed to test innovative advertising campaigns on a global basis, most recently in cyberspace via the Internet. Never a slave to work, Wunderman has always made time for cultural interests, including a world-class collection of primitive art, primarily from the Dogon, a tribe in Mali with whom he sojourned on several occasions. A consummate pitchman's commercial manifesto, complete with an ingratiating rags-to-riches narrative and a host of case studies illuminating the tricks of his catalytic trade. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"If you've ever wondered about all those catalogs and advertisements that fill your mailbox, here is the inventor to tell you the inside story. Lester Wunderman developed what is now called direct marketing, and this is a fascinating exposition of a commercial success story that has had a major impact on our civilization."

In Being Direct, Lester Wunderman, the brilliant pioneer of direct marketing, shows how companies as diverse as American Express, the Columbia Record Club, Ford Motor Company, and L.L. Bean have used his revolutionary strategies to build profitable relationships with their customers.

Filled with entertaining and enlightening stories from his personal experience in every aspect of the direct marketing business, it offers invaluable advice on how to attract, interact with, and retain customers.

The creator of direct marketing discusses his development of the successful marketing strategy and explains how the interactive techniques that he created will transform the world of business and sales in the future. 25,000 first printing. Tour. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Lester Wunderman is Chairman of Wunderman Cato Johnson, Senior Advisor to the board of directors of Young & Rubicam, and Director of Dentsu Wunderman Direct in Japan. Mr. Wunderman has received countless awards for his marketing innovations and has been named to the Direct Marketing Association's Hall of Fame. He has served as Director of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and of the Advertising Council.