TITLE : SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL DIRECT MAIL.

PREFACE

Introducing a very direct mail man ...

The single best editor, marketer, genius I've ever met is Richard V. Benson. Temperamental, short-tempered, Dick has a boredom threshold that starts one-tenth of an inch off the floor. He is also capable of stunning insights into a client's direct-marketing problems. After all, Dick was the only human in our world who believed that $500,000 could be raised for the Admiral Byrd transpolar expedition by spending just $5,000. (He was wrong. Six hundred thousand dollars was raised for the same $5,000.)

Freelance writer Chris Stagg said it, and dozens of America's most successful direct marketers agree. They risked his bark and his bite because the rewards were so great. They listened to Dick, they learned from Dick, they followed Dick's advice all the way to the top of their different specialities.

And they are still doing it today.

Dick Benson's genius is unique. He can crunch numbers faster than most computers. But just as quickly, he can take demographics and turn the numbers into living, breathing human beings a marketer can reach-and sell.

Who is this man, this genius, this mentor and consultant to the stars of direct-mail advertising?

A child of the Depression. A Horatio Alger story. A man, successful beyond his own wildest dreams, who is more convinced than ever that the American Dream can come true.

He was born in Panama in 1921, the only child of American parents. Three years later, a flood wiped out the family banana plantation. His father took his wife and son to New York and promptly abandoned them. Dick's mother struggled and struggled, but in 1926, when he was five, she had to send him to a foster home in eastern Maryland. Like many Depression kids, he often went hungry. But at least he didn't starve.

When he was 11 years old, his mother took him away from the home and settled in Washington, D.C. He worked at every job a youngster could find in those dark years, but managed to graduate from high school-in the bottom quarter of his class.

Despite the dire warnings of teachers who said he was too dumb for college, he entered Maryland University and worked his way through as a department store clerk, construction laborer, doorman and streetcar conductor. One job paid 25 cents an hour. Another at least gave him eating money, but he had to work 48 hours a week and join the union to earn the $12 that kept him going. He certainly learned the value of money-a lesson he is still teaching today.

Finishing college early with a degree in political science-and again in the bottom quarter of his class-he spent World War II as a cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy Department, controller of the French Military Mission and foreign-service clerk in the U.S. Embassy in Chungking.

But that was as close as he ever got to realizing his schoolboy dream of becoming a career diplomat. He had a second, conflicting dream. Like Horatio Alger, he wanted to make a million dollars, and foreign service was no way to do it. So after the war, he tried accounting, selling and market research. He tried everything! And then, one brilliantly sunny day in August, 1947, he found himself-and his future. He fell into a job as circulation-business manager at Time-Life International, where he discovered circulation-promotion and the direct mail world he loves.

After Time, he became general manager of Onmibook, publisher-owner of Scarab Itnagazine, assistant to the treasurer of Merganthaler Linotype, circulation director of Field & Stream, associate publisher of World magazine, and vice president for circulation of the American Heritage Publishing Company, where his colossal creativity and pure cussedness became an industry legend.

At the age of 40, Richard V. Benson had invented more direct-mail "rules," taught more people about common sepse in advertising and sold more subscriptions for his employers than any man since. But he still hadn't made the elusive million dollars for himself. So in 1961, he left American Heritage to become a full-time consultant on his own.

As American Heritage president James Parton said:

I found it [Benson's departure] a bitter pill to swallow because I realized that it would be literally impossible to replace his entrepreneurial genius. Never after that did American Heritage Publishing Company have the same degree of promotional flair and ingenuity.

Jim Parton is only one of the legendary figures you will meet in this book. You will work with Dick Benson alongside Bert Garmise, Walter Weintz, Max Geffen, Bruce Catton, Jerry Hardy, Lester Wunderman, David Ogilvy, Martin Baier, Luther Breck, Dick Leventer, Emory Cunningham, George Hirsch, Clay Felker, Ed Mayer, Jim Prendergast, John Suhler, Nina Link, Bill Capps, Bob Krefting, Alan Drey, Richard Viguerie, Frank Schultz, Lester Suhler, Julian Haydon, Rodney Friedman and others.

You'll sit in on creative sessions with America's top freelance copywriters and art directors: Frank Johnson, Hank Burnett, Bob Jones, Jack Walsh, Bill Jayme, Richard Browner, Dick Archer, Chris Stagg, Todd Weintz, Linda Wells, Harry Walsh, Tom McCormick, Henry Cowen, Herschel Lewis, Irwin Glusker and Bob Fisler. You'll learn-step-by-step and package component-by-component-Dick Benson's techniques for creating a winner.

You'll read about his successes-and failures-in marketing American Heritage, the Culinary Society, Time-Life Books, the clients of Ogilvy & Mather, the New Republic, Old American Insurance, the Internal Revenue Service, Breck's, the Admiral Byrd Society, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Weekly Reader, Insurance Company of North America, Cresta Blanca, Redbook, Psychology Today, Southern Living, the Wall Street Journal, the Tourist Commission of Spain, McGraw-Hill, the Christian Science Monitor, U.S. News & World Report, Harpers magazine, 3M Company, Children's Television Workshop, the Contest News-Letter, Southern Landmarks, Historical Times Plates, the Hearst Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Yield House, Richard Viguerie Company, Goodbee Pecans, Smithsonian, Knapp Publishing Company, the University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter and R.L. Polk, with its diversity of clients.

Secrets of Successful Direct Mail is the story of countless dreams-come-true-and of the man who made them happen. It is the story of a grumpy genius who made millions for other people before he made that first million for himself.

Linda Wells

London, England

July 15, 1987