And the Winners Are

HELP WANTED

Belgian agency wins Maxwell Sackheim Award for best DM campaign

Human resource directors must have wondered why Cyriel Van Steenbergen was applying for a job.

His résumé was impressive. But he was 84, and he looked every year of it in the passport photo he submitted.

Indeed, he claimed on the résumé to have outlived every employer who could give him a reference.

Then the directors got to the last page of the document. There was a flier asking: “Would you like to prevent your employees from having to earn an extra income after retirement like Cyriel?”

And they realized that this was no job application. It was a direct mail piece from De Tijd, a Belgian business newspaper. And the purpose was to offer a brochure on pension planning.

The mailing drew requests for more than 2,800 brochures, a 24% increase over the norm for De Tijd. But it did more than generate response.

The package also won the Maxwell Sackheim Best in Show Award at this year's 29th John Caples International Awards in March. And it took first prize in the business standard direct mail piece (under $500/M) category. The winning agency? I Do, of Brussels, Belgium.

The title of the entry: “Cyriel (84) Needs a Job.”

The mailer was realistic in every way. The résumé was typewritten, and the note handwritten. And the flier was accompanied by an order form.

What's more, the targeting was just as clever as the creative. The mailing went to HR directors who had placed job listings in De Tijd.

The creative team included creative director/copywriter Johan Verest, art director Laurent Van Loon and production manager Stefaan Dufoer.

A full list of Caples winners is posted at www.caples.org/.

TEA FOR TWO

Tom Collins and Nancy Harhut Split Andi Emerson Award

OK, so we're boasting. But Direct columnist Tom Collins won this year's Andi Emerson Award. He shared it with Nancy Harhut, a senior vice president at Hill, Holliday.

The award, which previously had never been given to more than one person at a time, recognizes those who've provided “outstanding service to the direct marketing creative community.”

Collins is a co-founder of Rapp & Collins, a direct marketing agency launched in 1965. Together with partner Stan Rapp he's written four books on marketing, including “Maxi-Marketing,” the 1986 classic on advertising and promotion.

In 1987, a year after leaving the agency, Collins received the inaugural Irving Wunderman Award for lifetime creative achievement.

Tom's column, The Makeover Maven, appears every month in Direct. In it he reworks direct response print ads. He recently published a collection of these makeovers in “How I Would Have Done These Ads.”

Before joining Hill, Holliday, Harhut held senior creative management positions at Mullen and Bronner Slosberg Humphrey (now Digitas).

She and her teams have won more than 100 DM creative awards.

BETTER IN BRAZIL

Marcio Salem wins Irving Wunderman Award

Stateside readers may not have heard much about him, but they will. Marcio Salem, founder and president of Salem, an ad agency in Sao Paulo, Brazil, took this year's Irving Wunderman Award for lifetime creative achievement.

The trophy is given to an individual who's developed high-level DM creative for a decade or more.

Salem's work includes:

• The “Cups” campaign, which was developed for ABN Amro Bank. It incorporated five cups, each from a different country, to illustrate the institution's multinational nature.

• “Lost and Found,” in which a team of artists savaged a copy of a restaurant guide, giving it a used look that demonstrated how much the guides are read.

• “Ice Block,” which encased an information pamphlet in a block of ice. The goal was to sell an IBM data storage system.

Once located in a single room, the agency now has 140 employees. In 2006, Salem became the youngest professional ever inducted into Brazil's Direct Marketing Hall of Fame.

THE CAPLES EPOCH

A John Caples timeline

1900	John Caples born (May 1).
1925	Two months into a copywriting job at Ruthrauff & Ryan, Caples writes his famous ad: “They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play…”
1927	Caples Joins BBDO.
1977	Caples inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame.
1978	Caples Awards founded by Andi Emerson.
1982	Caples inducted into the Direct Marketing Association's Hall of Fame.
1983	Caples retires from BBDO after falling from a ladder and breaking his back.
1984	First presentation of Maxwell Sackheim Best in Show Award.
1987	First presentation of Irving Wunderman Award.
1990	John Caples dies (June 10).
1990	First presentation of Andi Emerson Award.
1997	First presentation of Courageous Client Award. This honor recognizes a promotion so unusual in format or content that most clients would have nixed it.
2007	Emerson steps down after 29 years as president of the John Caples International Awards, but retains title of chairman. Board member and executive vice president/COO Patrick Fultz takes over as president. Fultz is Grayhair Direct's president/chief creative director.