Jim Carey has been selected to receive the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing’s Charles Downs Award. Carey is a past president of CADM, a marketing consultant and an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s graduate Integrated Marketing Communications program.
Carey is known for using humor to help introduce new ideas to colleagues and students. Sixteen years ago, he recognized the implications of the (then nascent) Internet on direct and gave a speech to the CADM entitled, “How Not To Be Roadkill On The Information Superhighway.” His speech inspired the CADM becoming one of the first marketing associations in the world with an online presence.
Carey later used the same approach to help the CADM launch advanced educational forums, including introducing non-technical marketers to advanced data mining tools – such as logistic regression, CHAID, neural networks, and pattern recognition – to solve marketing problems.
Carey’s first direct marketing job was as a list broker with direct marketing pioneer and DMA Hall of Fame member, Angelo Venezian. After being promoted to run the organization’s lettershop, he moved to the Frank Vos agency in New York, where he worked on “old school mail order accounts,” such as National Liberty Insurance and Encyclopaedia Britannica. At the New York office of Kobs & Brady (eventually DraftFCB), he worked on AT&T, US Navy and Prudential Insurance with Howard Draft.
Carey moved to Boston to run Ingalls Direct, the direct division of a general ad agency. Two subsequent mergers found him leading client services at Ogilvy Direct in Chicago. From there, he founded The Carey Group.
In his 10 years at Northwestern, Carey has taught “Direct, Database & E-Commerce (DDE) Strategies,” and “Marketing Metrics & Scorecards.” For the last four years, he has helped run the IMC Summer Residency Program, working with corporate sponsors to place 80 students in summer projects.
The Downs Award is named in honor of Charles S. Downs, the late advertising director of Abbott Laboratories, a founder of CADM and its first president, from 1955-57. The award is judged on a number of criteria. Winners must be current or former CADM members who have contributed innovations and new concepts to the practice of direct marketing; provided guidance and advice to colleagues and given his or her talents to civic and charitable works. The award will be presented to Carey at the first annual IMX Spotlight Dinner on Monday, May 4, at Spiaggia Restaurant. The event will be held on the eve of CADM’s 55th annual educational conference and exposition.
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