2003 marks the 25th anniversary of the John Caples International Awards, founded by Andi Emerson in 1978. To celebrate, DIRECT spoke with Emerson; this year’s Caples chairman Larry Kimmel, chairman/CEO of Grey Direct; and four past chairpersons

2003 marks the 25th anniversary of the John Caples International Awards, founded by Andi Emerson in 1978. To celebrate, DIRECT spoke with Emerson; this year’s Caples chairman Larry Kimmel, chairman/CEO of Grey Direct; and four past chairpersons—Worth Linen, CEO of WLA Inc.; Emily Soell, vice chairman of DraftWorldwide; Joe Cupani, former chief creative officer of Wunderman/DM consultant; and Mike Slosberg, co-founder of Digitas—to get their take on the state of DM creative. The Caples, honoring creative solutions to DM problems, will be presented Feb. 27 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York.

DIRECT What have been the biggest changes in the business since the Caples Awards started?

KIMMEL There are just so many new award categories, for e-mail and customer retention, Web sites and emerging technologies, that just weren’t in existence 25 years ago. I think the challenge is getting a new generation of people who aren’t automatically skilled in the classic techniques of direct response to figure out what the basic principles are and then apply them to the new mediums.

CUPANI [When I started in the industry] teams didn’t work as teams. A writer would write the copy and then hand it over to an art director. Now they work as a total unit.

SLOSBERG It’s not so much about response anymore. It’s about behavior. When I was first in the business, the metric was response. But for the General Foods of the world, response wasn’t a fine enough metric. Behavior, however, could be measured pre- and post- [campaign], and you could look at the behavior you wanted, rather than the behavior you had.

LINEN All the old tricks—like the offer has to be clear—still work. But to be effective now you have to go beyond that. You have to have more emotional and more creative copy.

EMERSON The biggest and saddest change has been the lack of awareness that continual testing is essential. Clients now say to agencies ‘Well, you’re an agency, you’re supposed to know. Give me your best ideas.’ That’s impossible. It’s not possible to know what is the one and only way to approach a problem.

SOELL Brand is so important in direct marketing now. It really wasn’t when I started. [DM] wasn’t about being creative or being clever. It was more of a science, and we tested everything.

DIRECT Is there one essential element to all good DM creative?

SLOSBERG Relevancy. You have to find the right audience with the right message at the right time, and it has to be measurable.

SOELL It has to start where the customer is. So many ads start where the product is or where the client is, rather than understanding where the customer is and what he thinks is primary.

KIMMEL I think there are two: communication simplicity and offer effectiveness. It used to be the more you tell, the more you sell. When I was a kid in this business, people would say an eight-page letter was better than a four-page letter. That’s not always the case anymore. People don’t have the time or the patience, and self-mailers and postcards sometimes outpull packages.

DIRECT Is the U.S. creative community being outpaced by international creatives?

EMERSON They’re doing more testing than we are here. In some countries they have nothing to go on, so everything they’re doing is an experiment. Some of our judges look at the stuff with tears in their eyes. They would love to be able to do that.

CUPANI You have to look at it in context. We’re different cultures. On a cultural level, [many other countries] are much freer than we are. They have fewer taboos. I think our work is equivalent in the context of who we are.

LINEN I think the Europeans have always had a better sense of humor, maybe because the infrastructure isn’t as good there. Maybe because the medium is more expensive, it forces more creativity to break the clutter. In general, I think the U.S. does the science better but Europe does the art form better.

DIRECT Should U.S. creatives be taking more risks?

KIMMEL My answer is always yes—but do controls at the same time. Be responsible and be outrageous. Be responsible in [testing] something that has a high probability of success, but test the outrageous as well.

EMERSON Yes. Test formats, copy approaches, different kinds of offers and prices. Before the dot-com crash, what was passing for ‘innovative’ direct marketing here was just edgy stuff, an awful lot of stuff that was creative for creativity’s sake. It had nothing to do with the basics of DM or the way people react. What’s edgy about full frontal nudity? Yes, it does get your attention but does it create sales, does it get inquiries? Maybe…but not the right kind.