Bob Castle, who will be remembered as much for his generosity of spirit as his formidable marketing skills, died March 8. He was 69.
The list veteran died in New York Hospital of polymiositis, a debilitating illness that he had for 20 years.
IF THERE'S ONE THING ALL direct marketers can agree on, it's that the ever more buttoned-down business will never again see the likes of Bob Castle.
A man of many interests, Castle could discuss de Kooning as easily as he could hotlines, and he had a rare sense of humor about himself. In 1995, he was named DMA List Leader and referred to the ceremony as “my bar mitzvah.”
A New Yorker to the core, Castle grew up in the Bronx, at Tremont and the Grand Concourse. His family was in the real estate business, but he wanted no part of that. His passions were reading and baseball, especially the statistical part of the game.
A fledgling writer, he majored in English literature at City College of New York (CCNY) and later received a master's in the subject from the University of Indiana.
These credentials landed him a job at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency in 1964. He worked with Norman Mailer on serializing the novel “An American Dream” (“a great first chapter but a terrible novel,” Castle would say) and with author Norman Spinrad. But he couldn't make a living at it.
He next tried public relations, working as general manager of Media Distribution Services, which disseminated press releases. The contact names were kept on zinc oxide plates and segmented into groups of seven or eight people, giving him his first exposure to lists, he later recalled.
Then he found his true calling.
Castle got into direct marketing in 1969 thanks to his friend and CCNY classmate Ralph Stevens. Stevens, who was then advertising manager of the Famous Artist School, wrote and sent a letter on Castle's behalf to several list companies, and succeeded in getting him a job with Names Unlimited, the list firm founded by Arthur Martin Karl.
But first Stevens had to convince general manager Milt Smolier that Castle's weight at that time wouldn't harm him with clients. “I told Milt, ‘Talk to him for five minutes. You'll forget about his weight when you get a sense of how charming, intelligent, articulate and mesmerizing this guy is.’”
Stevens was right. Being the new guy on the staff, Castle was given the job of booking package inserts. There were only eight or 10 programs in the United States at that point, but Castle saw the potential when he got a $22,000 order, and he personally opened several hundred more.
Arthur Karl, who mentored many top list brokers, practiced the cello in the office every afternoon. He once planned to install a waterfall in the office but backed off when Castle convinced him that the dripping would hurt his playing.
Karl died in 1971 and the company was soon sold. The next stop for Castle was Uni-Mail, the list company that he ran for more than two decades as part owner. David Avrick was a co-owner into the 1990s. Initially Castle handled inserts, but he eventually was put in charge of the entire business.
Direct marketing was booming, and Castle found himself riding the wave. In 1974, he recalled, he obtained a list of 1.9 million coin buyers from the U.S. Treasury through the Freedom of Information Act.
“Some people in the Treasury Department found 2 million Carson City silver dollars in a room,” he said in 1995. “I got back a letter saying I could have the file for $515. It took nine people to restrain me. A truck pulled up with boxes that contained the magic words: ‘master tape.’ I had the only copy.”
He scored a similar coup in landing the brokerage account of National Liberty, a mail order insurance company run by Arthur DeMoss and staffed largely by religious missionaries. It just so happened that Castle's minor in college was comparative religion. Thus, he was able to hold his own with National Liberty executive Larry Woodruff on the question of whether Cain proved that man was inherently evil or if Jesus proved he was inherently good.
“Larry said, ‘You're Jewish,’ Castle remembered. “We got into an incredible discussion. I had the whole account in three days.”
In the years that followed, Castle helped sell many programs for National Liberty, everything from veteran's insurance to policies for non-drinkers.
How would you verify that they didn't drink?
“It was phony,” Castle laughed. “You couldn't prove it.”
He also placed inserts for mail order wizard Joel Jacobs, who sold products like steel-mesh long-lasting socks that were too painful to walk in. “Every time I wanted to clear the insert, people would tell me the piece was sleazy,” Castle said.
Castle ran Uni-Mail for over two decades, displaying many other skills besides brokering and selling. For one, he became interested in technology and developed systems for data retrieval and exchange. And he showed a knack for nurturing list talent.
One of his important hires was Carolyn Woodruff, who now is a broker at Direct Media. Castle hired Woodruff after the closing of WB Marketing, her late husband Stan's company.
“He was so good to Stan and me when we needed it,” Woodruff recalled.
She added that Castle was kind to all his employees.
“He was a humanist,” she said. “He was always fair, and he was a great mentor to a lot of people.”
What did he teach her about list brokerage?
“To ask a lot of questions,” Woodruff said. “To really listen to your clients and understand their business.”
Castle's wife Joan called him “a master of the large gesture.” On one hot summer day, he sent an ice cream cone to her at her office at Hearst, and on another occasion, she found egg creams being mixed for her there.
The Castles shared similar interests in art and literature, and sought to live “literary lives,” she said.
Castle sold his stake in Uni-Mail in 1996. After that, he did consulting work and also owned several lists, including a file of 3.8 million nurses. In development at the time of his death, a Web site devoted to those files (www.nurseslist.com) was scheduled for launch at deadline.
He also wrote for Direct magazine, weighing in on every topic from how to find good hotline names to how to discern mistruths on data cards. He was a fine writer, who often used humor and baseball stories to illustrate a point. He also moderated Direct's annual list roundtables for several years.
“He was a great list guy,” said Steve Leighton, the head of Leighton Consulting, who for many years was in-house list manager at Fingerhut. “He taught me much about the list business in my early managing days in the late '70s.”
Summing up, Stevens marveled that Castle could “cope with a debilitating disease and retain his mental equilibrium and zest for life. He was one of the most courageous, energetic and enthusiastic guys I've ever met.”
