Lunch with a Legend

Item Description

Lester Wunderman, consultant, professor, author and photographer is Chairman Emeritus and founder of Wunderman.

After an apprenticeship at several agencies, Mr. Wunderman joined Maxwell Sackheim & Company in 1947, where he became Executive Vice President. In 1958 he founded Wunderman, Ricotta & Kline, now known as Wunderman.

In 1967, in an address at MIT, Mr. Wunderman identified, named and defined Direct Marketing, and for more than four decades he has led the theoretical and practical growth of the industry. He has received many awards and tributes from the direct marketing industry including being named to the Direct Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame in 1983 and the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame in 1983. He also received the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Midwest “Direct Marketing Association, the 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award from Direct Marketing Days in New York and the 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award from the New England Direct Marketing Association.

In 1995, he received the award for leadership in direct marketing from the Associacion Espanola de Marketing Directo in Spain. In 1994, he received the DMA Foundation Edward Mayer Award for educational leadership and in 1992 he received the Ed Sisk Award for Direct Marketing Vision. In 1985, he received the Focus Award for contributions to international direct marketing given by the Montreux Symposium of Direct Marketing in Switzerland, and was named Direct Marketer of the Year in 1982 by Direct Mail Day in New York.

In 2007, he has been chosen to receive the Global Leadership Award from the Marketing Communications Division of the UJA.

Mr. Wunderman has also received recognition from the general advertising industry. In 1988, he was elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame and was named as one of twenty “Advertising Legends and Leaders” by Adweek Magazine and one of “The Most Influential People in Sales and Marketing” by Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. In 1999, he was named as one of the “Top 100 People in Advertising” by Advertising Age.

His book, Being Direct, was first published by Random House in January 1997 and an updated and revised edition is currently published and distributed by the Direct Marketing Association. It has been translated into many languages, including Chinese and Japanese. An earlier book, Frontiers of Direct Marketing, was published in 1981, and his speeches and articles have appeared in publications worldwide.

Mr. Wunderman has addressed industry and government groups in more than 25 countries. He has been the featured speaker at many important functions of the direct marketing industry, as well as Chairman of the first Direct Marketing Day in New York in 1971 and Chairman again in 1983. He was Visiting Professor Direct Marketing at the School for Continuing and Professional Studies at New York University 1998-2000. He has also lectured on direct marketing at Columbia University, Fordham University, Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He attended Brooklyn College, The New York School for Social Research and Columbia University, where he did graduate work in cultural anthropology and art history. He was awarded and honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by the City University of New York in June of 1984.

Mr. Wunderman was formerly a Director of the Advertising Council and he also served on the Board of Directors of the Direct Marketing Association. He was Secretary/Treasurer of the American Association of Advertising Agencies for two years and a member of its Operations Committee and Board of Directors.

Mr. Wunderman is currently Chairman Emeritus and Founder of Wunderman and Chairman of the Board of Directors of i-Behavior. He is former Chairman of the Executive Committee of The Center for Direct Marketing of New York University, and he was Founding Chairman of The DMA International Strategic Forum on Direct Marketing. He also served on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Direct Marketing of the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University, and he was formerly Chairman of the Communications Design Advisory Committee of the Parsons School of Design and a member of its Board of Overseers.

Mr. Wunderman served as Chairman of the Visiting Committee of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he served on UNESCO’s International Fund for the Promotion of Culture. He was also a long-time Trustee of the Sesame Workshop (formerly known as the Children’s Television Workshop). In 2007, he was honored as Communication Man of the Year by the Communications Division of the UJA.

Mr. Wunderman is also a photographer. He studied with Dan Wiener at the Photo League in New York and with Berenice Abbot at the New School for Social Research. His photographs of the Dogon people of Mali are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Louvre and have been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and 12 other museums. He is represented by the John Stevenson Gallery in New York.

Mr. Wunderman is married to the former Suzanne Oksman Cott, who, under the professional name of Sue Cott, was Director of Editorials for WCBS-TV for many years.

Don't miss an unforgettable lunch with this living legend.

Item Special Note

Included in the package is the cost of the lunch (maximum $80; winning bidder is responsible for the difference).  DMEF will make the initial introduction; scheduling to be arranged by the winning bidder at the convenience of Mr. Wunderman.