In 1954, Peter Drucker wrote in his seminal work, The Practice of Management,
There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.[1]
This statement served to elevate the role of the modern professional marketer – including my own father who has lived by this statement most of his professional career.
I was looking for some files on my hard drive and stumbled upon a document concerning my father, a direct response marketing practitioner since 1972. In it was an idea to commemorate my father’s work in the field of direct response marketing. It was also an idea to pay homage to a man who got into the business when there weren’t many formal marketing degrees in academia let alone documented work in the field of direct marketing (which was called direct mail back in his day).