NEW YORK, Today: Wunderman Inc founder/chairman Lester Wunderman – direct marketing trailblazer extraordinaire – died last week (on January 9) of natural causes. He was 98 years old.
Wunderman launched a new kind of advertising agency in 1958 – one that focused totally on delivering sales rather than image. That concept caught on and led to the creation of today’s trillion-dollar direct marketing industry.
The visionary marketing techniques he conceived and perfected over his long and brilliant career transformed the advertising industry and continue to shape the interactive marketplace.
“The direct sales concept caught on and led to the creation of today’s trillion-dollar DM industry.”
Wunderman was inducted into the DMA Hall of Fame in 1983. And in 2001, Time magazine heralded him as “One of the great pitchmen”.
His book Being Direct was published by Random House in 1997 and reissued in 2004 with new information, including the first-ever Consumer’s Communications Bill of Rights, and his views on the Internet. In 2010, it was translated and published into Chinese. An earlier book, Frontiers of Direct Marketing, was published in 1981, and his speeches and articles have appeared in publications worldwide.
Wunderman merged with fellow WPP shop JWT in November last year to form Wunderman Thompson.
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