The best thing about DMA05 for me was the Hall of Fame selections. For once, the DMA got it just right.
Take Boardroom founder Marty Edelston. He’s a direct marketing giant, the patron of some of the best copywriters ever to adorn this business. Boardroom’s direct mail can be read as entertainment in its own right, with its bullet-point “fascinations.” But Marty is so much more.
As Diane Cyr wrote in Direct in 1996, “What he is, perhaps…is a perfectionist and sponge, an idea-monger of the first order.” Marty, a visionary on many fronts, moved his company out of New York years before 9/11 because of the terrorism threat. I’ve always remembered what he told Diane: “I am someone who would like to live in a rational future. The more I read, the less rational the future seems to me. And if it’s not rational, then I will do what I can to make it a rational future.”
Then there’s Tim Litle, one of the two most ingenious people in all of direct marketing. (The other? Jay Walker, but in a totally different way.)
In the ’80s, Tim provided the mail order business with something it never had: efficient credit processing tailored to its precise needs. He also pioneered instant electronic communications. Later he sold his firm in one of the most lucrative and cleverly conceived deals I’ve ever seen. And now he’s back.
For years, he was my main source of input on many issues. I would leave our dinners with Tim, Joan Litle and my wife with a notebook full of ideas. Like Marty Edelston, Tim is a visionary. And he and Joan have a worthy successor in their son Tom.
One of my favorite old Chicago photos shows Wabash Avenue in the 1890s. Barely visible under the “L” trestle is a little store sign that says “Spiegel.” Yes, Spiegel, the historic mail order firm. Ted Spiegel, the last member of the Spiegel family to serve at the company, also was inducted. Ted worked at Spiegel for 30 years, serving as everything from buyer to senior vice president for marketing. He’s also a family historian who tells marvelous stories about the Spiegels in the United States (the first, Moses Spiegel, a rabbi from Oppenheim, Germany, arrived in 1848). Ted also headed up the DM program at Northwestern University. He’s a gracious and soft-spoken man who generously shares his knowledge.
Congratulations to all three of these exceptional leaders.
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