Martin Conroy, an advertising executive who created one of the most enduring ad campaigns of all time, died on Tuesday in Branford, CT at 84, according to the New York Times.
The cause was complications of lung cancer.
His masterwork was a subscription letter for The Wall Street Journal. With minor variations, Conroy’s letter was in continuous use from 1975 to 2003.
Martin Francis Conroy was born in New York on Dec. 13, 1922. In 1943, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA and afterward served with the Army in Germany. He worked as a copywriter at Bloomingdale’s and on the editorial staff of Esquire magazine before joining BBDO in 1950 and moved up to a vice president there. He left the agency in 1979 to work as an independent consultant.
He is survived by his wife, eight children, a sister and 14 grandchildren.
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