Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay

If you are looking for a book that will give you the top 10 list of how to make your advertising pay, then this is not the book for you. Mr. Wunderman's memoir is a look back on a life-time spent coming up with creative direct marketing solutions to business problems. My key takeaways from this book are to understand that the way to achieve truly impressive breakthroughs is not to resort to tried and true formulas. The formulas will get you incremental improvement at best. For example Wunderman discusses how he sponsored a Chicago radio show of a prominent minister to target those in need of hearing aids. In another section he is challenged to develop a million leads for a rose grower who typically received 150,000 new prospects a year. In both cases, Wunderman hits it out of the park. The key insight to enjoying the book is to listen to Wunderman's repsonse to legendary copywriter Maxwell Sackheim's question, "What is it that you do?" Wunderman's answer, "I get clients and help them with their marketing problems." Wunderman is a troubleshooter, and his toolset is direct marketing. Cheers!

Now in an updated second edition, Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay presents the wisdom and practical experience of advertising legend and direct marketing pioneer Lester Wunderman, perhaps best known for his guidance behind the ubiquity of the American Express card, the creation of the Columbia Record Clob, and the well-known L.L. Bean. Although Being Direct focuses especially upon successful direct marketing, the experiences recounted within the pages are critically important to any business striving to get the most out of its advertising budget. From inventing new direct marketing media to how to successfully start an advertising agency to speculations of changes in the future and more, Being Direct is an eye-opening look at the changing business-consumer relationship from the point of view of a man who not only adapted to modern revolutions of information technology, but put them to use for success beyond anyone's dreams.

Lester's tale really gives you an inside look at how the entire 'Direct' movement started and his place in it's history. I loved the format of this book; being story formatted made it read much easier than many of the dry books out there on Direct Marketing and Advertising. This book should be a part of any real marketers collection. It's thick with timeless tips and techniques you may glean from it's pages.

As a Direct Marketeer I was really impressed by Wunderman's clear, sophisticated, simple book that is REALLY about direct selling ! For a Direct Marketing "freshmen" it helps to think about what you should think about. And for profis it is a treasure of Direct Marketing strategies that allready worked.

What a story! Wunderman invented so many of the marketing techniques we take for granted. Now he shares the inside story on how it did it. An inspiring trip through some of the greatest marketing ever.