Hal Crandall Calling THE Direct Marketing Association’s recent fall conference was one sad event. Hal Crandall had died on Oct. 4 at 73. Not that I ever saw Hal much at these conferences, but it’s rough knowing that I’ll never again check my hotel messages and hear his gravelly voice saying, “Ray, Hal Crandall. Let’s talk.”
Hal ran an executive search firm for the telemarketing business, but that was only his day job. In his real life, he was a Damon Runyon character who punctuated his remarks with laughter, and loved to entertain at his old New York haunts.
I found this out years ago when Hal called to complain that we’d published more of his annual telemarketing survey than we were supposed to. He invited me out for a talk and said, “I give good lunch.”
He sure did. We had chicken hash at 21. But we didn’t talk about the survey; instead, he regaled me with stories about his days as a reporter on the old Long Island Press.
The survey was worth talking about, though, because Hal routinely came up with the best stats in the business. Every editor wanted first dibs on them.
Hal had several careers. He worked on Wall Street until around 1970, and then started his search business. As DIRECT writer Jonathan Boorstein has said, he approached his job not as a headhunter but as a matchmaker.
His office was filled with ceramic, wood, glass and papier-mache apples from around the world, and his walls were adorned with adages. But Hal didn’t need props. He was one of the last real originals.
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