Ten Things Lester Wunderman Taught Us

A brief homage to the direct marketing legend who passed away last week.

by Mark Tungate , Adforum

As you may have heard, Lester Wunderman passed away on January 9 at the grand old age of 98. Although he never got a college degree, Wunderman was knife sharp, relentlessly curious – he educated himself by attending a number of different New York City colleges and universities – and essentially invented direct marketing.

While working as a copywriter at an agency called Maxwell Sackheim & Co in the late 1940s, he had the idea of using its mail order addresses to send promotional messages directly to customers, thus creating a one-to-one relationship with them. 

Ever since he founded his agency – Wunderman, Ricotta and Klein – in 1958, his name has been indelibly stamped on the industry. In fact his optimistic-sounding moniker was back in the headlines recently when J. Walter Thompson fused with Wunderman to create Wunderman Thompson.

It’s tempting to suggest that, in the historic battle between direct marketing and above-the-line advertising, the direct approach won the day. Lester, visionary as he was, predicted this all along. 

Here are ten thing he said that may convince you.

  • “Taste, desire, ambition and lifestyle have made shopping once again a form of personal expression. A computer can know and remember as much marketing detail about 200 million consumers as did the owner of a crossroads general store about his handful of customers…New marketing forms which will link these facts to advertising and selling must evolve—where advertising and buying become a single action.” (1967)
  • “Advertising has always been capable of eliciting a response—but only in the nature of a direct marketing dialogue do we find the potential for responsiveness. And if I read our marketing and social revolution accurately, responsiveness is the only road to a technology which will serve people instead of enslaving them.” (1971)
  • “The objective is to be relevant, not to be personal. Personal may offend. Relevancy never will.”
  • “Cybernetics, the unique interaction of man and machine, will change what we do and how and where we do it. It is not hard to envisage us doing part of our week’s work at home—almost no matter where we live.” (1980)
  • “Reach and frequency are out of date. Treat me as an audience that is respected. Only true contacts can begin relationships.”
  • “We’re in the death-knell of one-way conversations and the birth of the dialog system of marketing. The secret of the future is to listen to the customer, not to talk to him." (2010)
  • “Your share of loyal customers, not your share of market, creates profits. Spend more on the good customers you have.”
  • “It’s what we know about the customer and what the customer does, has done, and is likely to do that lets us pretty much predict the effects from advertising.”
  • “Brand has to touch everything from advertising to packaging to customer service communications—and in every medium you’re working in.”
  • “The consumer, not the product, must be the hero.”

For more on Lester, see http://www.lesterwunderman.com

TOPIC: WUNDERMAN