The Great Mentors (4,982 words)

October 1998

multipage

By that definition, everybody I ever worked for or with was either a mentor, tormentor or—more likely—both.

Evelyn

As an aspiring actor, I spent the summers of 1951 and 1953 at the Ivoryton (CT) Playhouse as apprentice, gopher, set painter, garbage hauler and sound effects engineer, eventually working my way up to assistant stage manager. My only part was in the summer of 1951 where I played a native boy in Rain opposite the great Metropolitan opera tenor, Lawrence Tibbett, who became the Reverend Davidson between slugs from a bourbon bottle offstage. I paraded around on stage proclaiming seven lines in Polynesian while wearing grotesquely itchy makeup all over my porky bod which was ludicrously clad in nothing but a Madras loincloth. If this is acting, I thought, the hell with it.

Since I came from a literary family, I decided to seek out the woman in charge of publicity, a whiskey-voiced, blotchy-faced, bleached blonde ex-Zeigfield Follies showgirl named Evelyn Lawson who was delighted a 15-year-old kid might be interested in what she was doing. Evelyn taught me the rudiments of public relations and publicity. She showed me how to set up a press release and write it so that it stood a chance of actually being printed with as few changes as possible. "Editors are basically lazy," she told me. "If you can give them something they can use, they'll use it rather than go to the trouble of creating stuff on their own."

That summer of 1951, the season was drawing to an end when it was announced that an extra production had been signed, Elmer Rice's Dream Girl to star Judy Holliday who the prior year had won the Academy Award for best actress in Born Yesterday. This extra week was a very big deal and a high-risk gamble by the producers. Evelyn, feeling burnt out and hung over, assigned me the job of writing a press release for the local papers, which I did. She tinkered with it some until we were both satisfied. Using an old Remington office typewriter, I typed it up on purple wax forms, hand-cranked it out on the Mimeograph machine, collated and stapled the two pages together, typed the envelopes, licked the stamps, folded, inserted the two-page release, licked the envelopes and took them to the post office. By golly, two of the local papers used the release verbatim and Dream Girl was SRO every performance. This was the first time I had ever seen my prose in print and my first brush with the idea that if you write persuasively and well, you will see results. It was a heady experience.

Ash

My first job after the Army in 1960 was publicizing Prentice-Hall trade books—writing press releases, sending out review copies and getting authors on radio and television. In 10 months under the tutelage of Ashbel Green—who later rose high in the Alfred A. Knopf organization—I could take a set of book-length galleys, know what was in the book and write a two-page press release within two hours. The highest accolade: when a reviewer used my press release verbatim as his review. That happened several times.

Frank

A great friend of the family was Franklin Watts, a tall, hard-drinking, cherubic-faced, traveling book salesman with a rollicking, raunchy sense of humor who founded a publishing company which he named for himself. If you asked Frank, "How are you?" it would invariably elicit a reply, "Happy as a country without a history."

When I was 17, my mother, step-father and I were invited out to the Fire Island house that Frank and Helen Watts had rented for the summer. At an early afternoon gathering for Bloodies on the roof, I said rather superciliously, "Frank, what should I do with my life?"

Frank waited until all eyes were on him, and with exquisite timing he said very slowly, articulating every syllable:

Denny...you...have...all...the... makings...of...a...first...class... s..l..o..b.

My mother swallowed hard and my stepfather's jaw dropped open. Frank continued:

You are a marvelous weekend guest. I mean, you fetch ice and make drinks and help in the kitchen, do the shopping and are a good listener. My advice to you is to cultivate 52 good friends and spend one long weekend a year with each of them.

Believe it or not, eight years later I went to work for Frank Watts as publicity director, working my way up over three and a half years to sales manager. It was Frank Watts who taught me how to sell, to always ask for an order and, when the sale was complete, "like the Arabs, fold up the tent and leave." It was Franklin Watts who imbued me with the idea that many rules existed in life and in business and that you broke them at your own peril. For example, I remember driving past corn fields in mid-July from Chicago to Kankakee to call on Baker & Taylor, Frank dredged up a rule from his boyhood in Kansas:

•The corn should be seat-high to the privy by the fourth of July.

His rules for business were many and varied:

•When in doubt, do the obvious.

•People love to be sold.

•Sell what you got.

•In business and in love, if you ask a direct question, be prepared for a direct answer.

•Always answer your own phone.

•Always see a salesman once.

Alas, Frank was also a tormentor, screamingly funny, but a castrator and micro-manager who made some abysmal decisions over four-martini lunches.

Hughes

Although I was nominally sales manager for Franklin Watts, Inc., Frank was in fact his own sales manager. In book publishing, a dealer can return any unsold merchandise which caused Frank to say every year on his birthday, "Don't wish me many happy returns; there's no such thing!"

Because he wrote nasty letters to my customers taunting them about their sloppy returns, I resigned. I had an idea for a publishing venture but did not have a clue how to go about raising capital to launch it. Frank's good friend, former president of Bobbs-Merrill, M. Hughes Miller, had a publishing consultancy with a small suite of offices in the Seagram Building. It was Hughes who took me under his wing and spent an inordinate amount of time teaching me the financial side of businesses which he did not have to do for an out-of-work kid.

Elsworth, Lew, Mike, Hank and Bob

Probably the happiest period of my business career was my first job in direct marketing—at Grolier Enterprises in the mid-1960s with Elsworth Howell at the helm. This was the heyday of the Dr. Seuss books by mail and I found myself working for men who were smarter than I was and whose operation was on the cutting edge of direct marketing. On the day I reported for work, my boss, Lew Smith, sat me down and gave me a 30-minute lecture on direct mail which is still etched in memory. Among the things he taught me that morning:

•The 13 most powerful and evocative words in the English languages are: you, save, money, easy, guarantee, health, results, discover, love, new, proven, safety, free.

•Never use "we," "us" or "ours" in direct copy.

•Test one thing at a time.

•Neatness rejects involvement.

During those two years at Grolier Enterprises, I did everything—created product, wrote copy, planned mailings, researched lists, counted orders. The atmosphere and corporate culture were electric. If I had a question or needed guidance, Elsworth, Lew, production genius Mike Chomko, billing and collections maven Hank Rossi (pictured), or EVP and DMA Hall of Famer Bob Clarke would clear their desks on the spot and help me tackle the problem. Lew left to become creative director at the Wunderman agency and his replacement and I didn't get along. But thanks to those men, I got the equivalent of an M.B.A. in direct mail.

Bob

At Macmillan I was director of four book clubs: The Lawyer's Literary Club, the School Administrator's Club, and two Catholic religious clubs acquired from Bruce Publishing—one for priests and one for laymen—a preposterous assignment, considering that I was a twice-divorced, non-believing Episcopalian. My fellow book club director was Bob Scott, a crusty curmudgeon who knew just about everything about everything. Scott taught me how to write terse, selling copy to a specific audience.

Paul

One of my first clients as a freelancer was former Consumer Reports circulation director Paul Goldberg. We began working together in 1976 and eight years later he became a full partner with my wife, Peggy, and myself in the newsletter we founded, Who's Mailing What! Paul knows more about lists, list research and data enhancement than anyone I have ever met; and, amazingly, he can discuss it in plain English.

Bob

The Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) was, by far, Walter Weintz's biggest client. I loathed Nixon and Agnew and was not allowed anywhere near the account; rather I was hired to look after the other business while Walt and his son, Todd, spoon-fed Maurice Stans and the RNC. Then a funny thing called Watergate happened; suddenly Republican money dried up and Walt lost the account and I was fired. Should I go freelance? Walt encouraged me to do so.

I called the Weintz Company's other leading client, Bob Teufel, then circulation manager of Rodale who invited me to have a drink at the Oak Bar in New York's Plaza Hotel. Teufel gave me two invaluable pieces of advice:

•Never overcommit. Maintain an even workflow; otherwise, you'll miss deadlines and drive yourself—and your clients—crazy.

•Always go first class. People like success. Teufel liked working with Walt Weintz because he drove a Mercedes, loved good restaurants and took clients fishing on his 54' Bristol Trawler on Long Island Sound.

After 22 years of freelancing, I have determined there are four inviolable conditions a person must meet in order to be a successful freelancer or consultant:

• You have to be very good at what you do.

• You have to be able to sell yourself and be very good at holding clients' hands.

• You must be comfortable operating on your own, outside the environment of a big office with people to bounce ideas off of.

• You have to be able to deal with abysmal cash flow.

Meet all six of the above criteria, you'll work harder, have more fun and make more money than you ever dreamed possible.

Harold and Lester

When I took over the Better Homes & Gardens book clubs, I was handed a report that showed Family Book Service had lost $500,000 the prior year, not an inconsiderable sum in 1970. My charge from from management: "Fix this."

Probably the most brilliant financial guy I ever met was the club comptroller, a bearded, brazen, bellicose character named Harold Schwartz (pictured) who could scan a 90-page computer report, see a major flaw on page 12 and order it sent back for reprogramming—all in the space of about 30 seconds.

Harold taught me how to forecast, how to write a business plan and how to deal with impossible DP people.

Meredith had bought the clubs from Lester Doniger, a wonderfully patient, brilliant, old-time book club wizard who stayed on as consultant and taught me the basics of book club management.

In addition, working with Harold and Lester, I learned customer analysis and RFM (although it wasn't called that back then), which enabled me to throw 250,000 non-buying members out of the club and make it profitable again.

Walt and Fent

Walter Weintz had a small direct mail agency in Stamford, CT. In past lives, he had been circulation director for Reader's Digest, and inventor of the token—or "hot potato" as he called it—and the fabled penny mailing where two pennies showed through a second window of the carrier envelope.

It was Weintz, too, who revolutionized political direct mail with his efforts for Eisenhower-Nixon in 1952 that for the first time asked for money as well as a recipient's vote; American politics has never been the same. For three-and-a-half years I worked as a copywriter and sometime account executive for the Weintz Company. It was Walt Weintz who said:

If lawyers had their way, nobody would be allowed to mail anything.

Under Walt's tutelage I honed the craft of direct mail copywriting, learning what goes on an envelope, in a letter, in a circular and on an order card—and why. Walt best articulated the definition of a consultant:

A consultant is someone when you ask what time it is, he borrows your watch and tells you; then he keeps your watch.

Walt Weintz gave me his watch.

Laboring in the Weintz vineyards was Fenton Powers, a laid-back, dapper, mustached, old time advertising artist who had worked in the big New York agencies. It was Fent who taught me the elements of design and the need to create copywriter's thumbnails in order to see where headlines, subheads and copy went and how to make an envelope, circular and order card flow. Watching Fent create elegant renderings with precise lettering was an inspiration.

Today, anyone with a computer and clip art can call himself a graphic artist; next to Fenton Powers, most of them are chumps.

Jamie

James Humes is the world's foremost expert on the speeches and speaking style of Winston Churchill. A former White House speech writer for Nixon and Ford and the author numerous books on Churchill, Humes is rotund, with a baby face, wears blue suits with a vest, gold watch fob, bow tie and homburg hat. He is usually to be found on the porch of a roaring party smoking a very large Churchillian cigar from Alfred Dunhill. It was Jamie who spent many hours letting me in on the secrets of how Churchill prepared and delivered speeches, frequently becoming Churchill with the growl and the sibilant "s." Thanks to Jamie Humes, I learned the craft of speechifying.

I was able to return the favor when Jamie stayed over at our house one night and complained he did not have any material to hand out or send to people who asked him about the possibility of appearing as Churchill. Over breakfast, I explained to him the rudiments of creating a small flier to accompany a letter. He took notes furiously and several years later I ran into him at a party in Philadelphia. He pulled from his inside jacket pocket the very flier I had envisioned. "It's kept me in work," he said.

Axel

Over the past 15 years as editor of Who's Mailing What! (now Inside Direct Mail), I estimate that more than 600,000 mail pieces passed through my fingers. Of course, it was impossible to read and analyze every piece. I was able to draw on my Prentice-Hall experience of speed reading material to sift out what was important.

The only person who has studied more direct mail than I is retired Swedish entrepreneur Axel Andersson (pictured) who receives dozens of boxes a month of our archive's dupes and merge/purges and who bought the house next door to his in Palm Coast, FL, to keep his massive archive of direct mail. Axel's continuing discoveries of what is—and what is not—working in direct mail are a marvel, as are the many rules he taught me. Among them:

•If you want to dramatically increase your response, dramatically improve your offer.

•For a test to be a clear winner, the number of responses must be more than double the square root of total orders.

•Don't promise savings in percentages; savings should always be shown in terms of money.

•Creating direct mail without studying other people's successful direct mail is like trying to do brain surgery without studying brains.

•Never give away as a sweepstakes prize the thing you are trying to sell. (The exception: cars.)

Everyone I Ever Talked to

In terms of learning the business of direct marketing, the watershed for me was being editor of Who's Mailing What! and Target Marketing. Go through back issues and you'll meet the people I met, learn what I learned and acquire a vast, hands-on knowledge of every aspect of direct marketing: mail, phone, DRTV, database, lists, creative, production, arithmetic.

Your Monthly Mentor: Target Marketing

When I came to Target Marketing almost six years ago, it was my aim to tap into the brilliance and innovation of direct marketers around the world and turn this publication into the industry's mentor. I hope— with the input of a talented group of colleagues and experts—that we have, in some small measure, succeeded. Who were Your Mentors?

From Brian Kurtz:

How did you get your start in direct marketing?

Kurtz, vice president of marketing at Boardroom Inc., has spent his career in the trenches. While Kurtz took a job in the list department to get his foot in the door, when an editorial position opened up two years later, he passed on the opportunity. He had been bitten by the direct marketing bug.

Who are your mentors?

Gordon Grossman, Dick Benson and (for the brief time he was able to know him) Irving Wunderman have all passed along advice he took to heart on testing, strategy, offers, etc. On the list side, Mike Manzari, of the former Kleid Company, and Dave Florence, from Direct Media, generously shared their wealth of list expertise. Of course, Kurtz credits his boss, Martin Edelston, as a major player in any success he's achieved in his career.

Why have mentors been important in your career?

"To create any kind of legacy for others, you need to give back to the industry what you have learned over time," Kurtz explains. His mentors are individuals who have taken the time to help others learn the craft. He feels it is his duty to not only give respect to his "elders" but to also contribute his own experiences to the knowledge shared by all direct marketers.

Kurtz adds that there is a very good group of people in direct marketing.

Colleagues can share information because "there is enough room for everyone… passing on your successes and failures is an 'and' and not an 'or' situation. —HM

From Jim Kobs:

Who were your mentors?

When Kobs, now chairman of Kobs, Gregory, Passavant, had amassed a few years' experience in direct mail copywriting, he was fortunate to land a job with a young agency bound for greatness. That agency was Stone & Adler, where he worked closely with mentor Bob Stone.

Most protégés feel lucky just to have shared memorable conversations with their mentors. For Kobs, the most rewarding experiences were the result of countless road trips with Stone to meet joint accounts; these excursions allowed him to learn his mentor's philosophies on not just business but life, too.

Pete Hoke, founder of the first direct marketing publication, also contributed to Kobs' overall success.

What did your mentors teach you?

The main lesson Kobs gleaned from Stone was to always pay careful attention to the offer in any direct marketing campaign. Stone's advice "opened my eyes to offers," and Kobs has made this strategy his focus ever since.

Kobs believes his main mentor continues to play a big part in shaping the field; Stone's book was the first tome devoted specifically to the subject and has been kept current, as well.

Hoke taught Kobs how to link direct marketing to the "bigger picture of marketing." Hoke made some immeasurable contributions to the field by creating a common vocabulary for the terms being used. —HM

From Vic Conant:

Who were your mentors and what did you learn from them?

Conant joined the family business, Nightingale-Conant Corp., in 1978 and learned the direct marketing business at the foot of the master, his father.

Lloyd Conant was the first person to send out personalized letters; he never changed his belief that a personal letter was the key to a successful direct mail business.

In fact, right before Lloyd Conant died in1986, a non-personalized mailing had just beat out his personalized control. He was determined to beat the non-personal effort if he just had a little time to work on it. That devotion to the "human touch" in mailings still drives Nightingale-Conant today.

Conant's father ran the publishing business with the help of two right-hand men: one was versed in copy and the other in design. They both made a positive impact on Vic.

How else did you learn the field?

Conant also quickly joined The Direct Marketing Association and the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing (CADM) to learn from seminars and conferences as well as to meet industry contacts. He took a direct mail course offered by the CADM and "probably never missed a meeting in the first four or five years."

Is there anyone else you admire in the direct marketing field?

Irwin Helford at Viking Office Products is an inspiring leader from whom to learn and to emulate as he's such a "pro." —HM

From Al Dyon:

How did you get involved with direct marketing?

"I took the local direct marketing club (CADM) basic introductory course in direct marketing right after graduating from college."

Who was your mentor?

"My mentor over the years has been John Flieder, whom I met when he was VP of advertising at Allstate. I was transferred to be a direct report to him."

What was the greatest advice you received from John?

"Line them up and keep them coming. Always build the business and try to anticipate what's ahead."

Do you consider yourself a mentor?

"I hope so. Many people I have worked with have gone on to greater responsibility in other companies or achieved it in our own organization. Keeping in touch with these people over the period that they have been gone has been very rewarding." —KM

From Chris Cleghorn:

Who was your mentor?

"Walter Karl, certainly, as he brought me into direct marketing, gave me an appreciation for this business…. Don Kuhn was also a great influence. He taught me to love the analysis side of direct mail and gave me an appreciation for the nonprofit sector that continues to this day. Over the years mentors really became the colleagues and peers with whom I associated. Especially important to me have been people I have worked with in The DMA Nonprofit Council." Cleghorn is currently VP of Direct Mail & Marketing at the National Easter Seal Society.

What was the greatest advice Don and Walter gave you?

"Walter showed me how to find ways to blend personal enjoyment with work. Don taught me that truth will always become apparent, whether it was the performance of a test mailing or the character of a person." —KM

From Bob Hacker:

Who was your mentor?

"Keith Rowe, assistant general manager at Kenworth, where I did advertising and product planning. He became a mentor through direct supervision. Rowe was focused—his job was to market and sell trucks through a dealer organization. Nothing could get him to change his focus on those tasks. If an activity or process didn't lead to selling more trucks through the dealer organization, you just didn't do it."

Hacker retains this focus at his own agency, The Hacker Group in Bellevue, WA.

What did your mentor teach you?

Rowe taught him to justify or kill programs based on strict P&L accountability. He worked hard and led Hacker by example. "He taught me the value of the 12-hour day. You can get a lot done when other people are sleeping."

Describe your greatest success in direct marketing?

"I created a concept for a new truck—the most expensive truck ever built. I saw a niche—the very high-end owner/operator market, but everybody thought I was nuts, since the whole industry was trying to reduce costs. I presented the case, and even though I was told that it would 'never fly,' management approved it. The first year's production sold out in one day. ROI was over 50,000 percent!" —RM

From Stefanie Pont:

Who are your mentors?

Lesli Rogers and Brian Kurtz. "I met Rogers at CDS, where [she] worked frequently, and we struck up a friendship. Rogers took an interest in me and helped me with the learning curve—directing me on how to be… more effective to clients and how to carry myself in business."

Pont now works list magic for The Millard Group.

What did you learn?

"Rogers was my guardian angel; she is driven, determined and perfection-oriented, but always made time to answer a question or deal with an issue. She was wonderful at expressing gratitude or criticism—no sugar coating, just the facts! She would tell me: 'Be honest,' 'Get out there,' 'Sell yourself,' and 'Don't undersell your client. I learned from Rogers that making the client look good was important; Rogers gently made corrections. I learned that, 'Half a job is not acceptable.'"

"From my second mentor, Brian Kurtz, I was guided through the politics and interplay between managers, owners, mailers and brokers. He has always encouraged me to speak and get involved, and he's an honest, fair sounding board. He's very down to earth, anybody can call him, and he enjoys imparting information and loves to teach; he likes to make people better." —RM

From Gordon Grossman:

Who was your mentor?

Walter Weintz. "He was my first boss in this business and one of the best direct marketing teachers ever. Walter was a very funny guy on the speaking platform, but he was all business at the office."

What's the most valuable lesson you learned?

"Probably the most valuable lesson he taught me came when I turned in my first piece of copy, a letter for Reader's Digest magazine. Since I had changed only the headline and a few words in the offer, I figured that I didn't need to retype the whole letter. When Walter looked at my copy with 'no change here' in a huge blank space, he simply chucked the offending document in the wastebasket. He told me that what he wanted to see was exactly what the potential customer would see—no more, no less. It's a simple lesson I never forgot."

Direct marketing "firsts":

Developing the first direct mail sweepstakes, use of regression analysis in direct mail. —RM

From Lawrence Peters:

What was your first direct marketing job?

"After college, I was hired as the assistant to the classified advertising manager at Ziff-Davis Publishing. That was my introduction to selling space advertising…" Now Peters is managing director of special marketing at Hachette Filipacchi Magazines.

Who was your mentor?

Hal Cymes, classified advertising director at Ziff-Davis in the 1970s. "Hal was more than a boss. He taught me how to run a department, manage a staff, develop sales leads, create promotional materials, handle customer service issues and create a telemarketing sales group."

How did your mentor shape your career?

"Hal took a raw recruit and helped me develop into a responsible businessperson. Also, he cared about his advertisers/clients and went out of his way to provide good service."

One piece of advice:

"Do everything humanly possible to deliver the best customer service to your clients." —RM