"Is Advertising Finally Dead?" asked Wired magazine in February 1994,
amidst the browser frenzy. First the remote, then the cable revolution,
and now--the Internet?

Written by the advocates of one-to-one marketing, the authors were
convinced that the world of 21st-century telecommunications, with its
bumper crop of marketing opportunities for everything from greeting
cards to room fresheners, would spawn new and myriad ways to sell
products and learn about consumers. "Advertising isn't dead," they ar-
gued, "it's been reborn." ¹

But exactly how will it be reborn?

Easier said than done. Some direct marketers have long suspected that
the reliance of media advertising on attitudinal factors, instead of be-
havioral ones, has resulted in "much ado about nothing." Moreover, they
consider the Internet an information media and therefore antithetical to
media advertising. If television exemplifies the physical marketplace and
the Internet the virtual marketspace, Lester Wunderman, a pioneer direct
marketer, sees them as polar opposites. "The intent of the Internet is
information, whereas that of television is entertainment. The brand will
be built more easily by information than by superficiality."

"If the advertiser wants my business, he has to understand what I
want," argues Lester Wunderman, the pioneer of direct marketing.

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