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P.S. It's important to note that The Journal's subscription may be tax deductible.
       Ask your tax advisor.

Martin Conroy, an advertising executive who without recourse to glossy paper or fancy graphics created one of the most enduring ad campaigns of all time, died on Tuesday in Branford, Conn. He was 84 and lived in Madison, Conn., and Captiva, Fla.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, his son Martin Peter Conroy said.

Mr. Conroy’s masterwork never appeared in newspapers or magazines. Nor was it broadcast on television or the radio. It was a letter — a simple, two-page letter. It begins:

“On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both — as young college graduates are — were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.."

Then, a small note of foreboding:

“Recently, these men returned to their college for their 25th reunion.."

Mr. Conroy’s letter is a subscription pitch for The Wall Street Journal. Written in plain language with the inexorable pull of a fairy tale, the letter is widely considered a classic of direct-mail marketing, sent to millions of people in the course of nearly three decades.
Although The Journal kept no statistics on the letter’s effectiveness, its sheer longevity, direct-mail experts say, is its own best testament. With minor variations, Mr. Conroy’s letter was in continuous use for 28 years, from 1975 to 2003.

“It’s the ‘Hamlet,’ the ‘Iliad,’ the ‘Divine Comedy’ of direct-mail letters,." James R. Rosenfield, a direct-marketing consultant in New York and San Diego, said in a telephone interview this week. “It’s had a longer life, to my knowledge, than any other direct mail in history.."

Alan Rosenspan, the president of Alan Rosenspan Associates, a direct-marketing concern in Newton, Mass., uses Mr. Conroy’s letter as a teaching tool in seminars.

“I ask people to read out loud the first paragraph of the letter,." Mr. Rosenspan said by telephone. “And what’s astonishing to me is that they never stop at the first paragraph. They keep on reading. And I tell them: ‘You have just proven why this letter’s so powerful. It’s a story.’ ."

The direct marketer’s task is to reel readers in — gently, firmly, imperceptibly — and keep them reading, despite the looming maw of the wastebasket. Mr. Conroy’s letter does so by spinning the hypnotic story of two young lives fatefully diverging. Here is what comes next:

“They were still very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern manufacturing company after graduation, and were still there.

“But there was a difference. One of the men was manager of a small department of that company. The other was its president.."

Strikingly, the letter nowhere says that the man who made good read The Journal. But the message is resoundingly there, between the lines.

“It doesn’t start off by saying, ‘Be rich beyond your wildest dreams and dominate your fellow human beings,’ ." Mr. Rosenfield said. “But the very obvious, palpitating subtext — it’s barely even a subtext — is greed and envy. So it’s a lovely combination of a hard-sell letter nested inside a kind of soft shell.."

Martin Francis Conroy was born in Manhattan on Dec. 13, 1922. In 1943, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and afterward served with the Army in Germany. He worked as a copywriter at Bloomingdale’s and on the editorial staff of Esquire magazine before joining BBDO in 1950; he later became a vice president there. He left the agency in 1979 to work as an independent consultant.

Mr. Conroy is survived by his wife, the former Joan Crowley, whom he married in 1949; eight children, Ellen McNamara, of Stamford, Conn.; Janice Albert, of Seattle; Martin Peter, of Hong Kong; John, of Manhattan; Thomas, of South Orange, N.J.; Dennis, of Darien, Conn.; James, of Fairfield, Conn.; and David, of New Milford, Conn.; a sister, Ellen Gruppo, of Darien; and 14 grandchildren.

Besides The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Conroy’s other accounts at BBDO included The Boston Globe, General Electric, Sheraton and Tupperware. But more than anything else, it was the Journal letter that made him storied in his field.

“I have won 20 direct-marketing Echo Awards,." said Mr. Rosenspan, referring to the international award given annually by the Direct Marketing Association, an industry group. He added:

“I would trade all of them to have written this letter.."

• Over the 28-year lifespan of the "Two Young Men..." letter, scores of freelance copywriters and agencies were paid thousands of dollars by The Wall Street Journal in attempts to beat this fabled control. It supposedly lost to an occasional test effort now and then according to rumors. But like Cisco Houston's wonderful folk song, The Cat Came Back, the two young men kept showing up in the WHO'S MAILING WHAT!  archive until 2003. 

Specifications of the Mailing

• Outside Envelope: 4" x 7-1/2," one color (black), glassine window lower right.
• Letter: 7" x 10-1/2", two-over-one (all black with Kann signature in blue on back).
• Order Card: 3-1/2" x 7," two color with detachable Guarantee.

P.S.  This past week I emailed Paul Bell and asked how The Wall
         Street Journal paid its circulation copywriters. Paul’s reply:

Denny:

The letter “Two Young Men,." was in use as the control mailing during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I arrived in the WSJ circulation department. Marty Conroy, who at one time was a regular copywriter at BBDO and later went out on his own, was on an annual retainer. I don’t recall the annual fee we paid to him.

The ballpark fee in the late 70s and early 80s was small by today’s standards, as I recall it. I can’t say for certain, but $5,000 seems to stick out in my mind ... and a smaller fee paid to tinker with the letter for subsequent test mailings. Notwithstanding this, remember that Marty was on a retainer and didn’t get the per-letter fee. Later on, perhaps it was 1990 or so, the retainer ended, but Marty stayed as a regular contributor for Barron’s and the Journal. We evolved to paying Marty per letter, thus my comment, “Don’t tell Marty or he’ll raise his price.."

I can emphatically say that at the Journal we bought the unlimited rights to each direct-mail letter and didn’t pay any performance bonuses.

I’m so glad you included the obituary written by Margalit Fox. She was masterful, and went through several phone calls with me to be sure she got the fine points down correctly. It was a masterful tribute to a genuinely good man.

And finally - - the Seven Deadly Sins. Marty said all of life’s foibles and vagaries could be traced to at least one of them.

All the best,

Paul

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