Leonard Reiss, the noted direct marketing copywriter, died of natural causes at his home in Key West, FL son Monday. He was 87.
Reiss was born on New York’s Lower East Side and grew up during the Great Depression. He graduated from NYU. In the Air Force during World War II, he served as a B-17 navigator, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross when his plane took charge of a mission after the first lead aircraft was shot down, according to noted DM copywriter and family friend Bill McCullam.
Back in civilian life, he married Zenaide Newman and joined Schwab & Beatty, the direct-response agency. Under the guidance of Victor Schwab, he became a copywriter and strategist.
Reiss was invited by Albert Dorne, Norman Rockwell, and their colleagues at the Famous Artists School to create the advertising for its correspondence courses. “It put little ol’ Westport, Connecticut on the map,” recalls illustrator Randall Enos, who taught there. “Half of the mail that came in to the town was for the school. We had our own mail truck.”
In 1962, the retiring Victor Schwab induced him back to head his alma mater. Impressed by Doyle Dane Bernbach’s work for Volkswagen, Reiss persuaded clients like Book-of-the-Month Club to test lively, contemporary print ads against their stodgy workhorses.
In “split-run” tests where sales results could be compared to the penny, the new ads often outperformed the old, by up to 400%; many continued to run profitably for years.
One example for the Metropolitan Museum Seminars in Art, “The painting that made a marriage legal,” appeared on the back page of the New York Times Magazine for well over a decade, becoming part of the culture.
After his agency was acquired, Reiss, divorced, married Philadelphia artist Lynn Sherman. He also began to pursue investing full-time and co-authored Getting Rich Outside the Dollar, a guide to foreign markets.
The couple divided their time between homes in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, and Key West, where Reiss was a mentor in the Take Stock in Children program for low-income high-school students.
Reiss is survived by his wife, Lynn, and former wife, Zenaide; his sister, Pearl Shanen; his children, Paula, Seth, and Eugene; two stepchildren, Anthony and Adam; seven grandchildren; and four step-grandchildren.
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