Martin Conroy
Martin Francis Conroy Jr. was an American advertising executive best known for a direct mail ad for the Wall Street Journal that was in continuous use for 28 years, from 1975 to 2003.
Biography
Conroy was born in Manhattan in 1922 to Martin Francis Conroy Sr. and his wife. After graduating from Xavier High School, he studied English at the College of the Holy Cross, graduating in 1943. While there, he joined Delta Epsilon Sigma. He then served in the United States Army, spending a year and a half in Germany in the European Theatre. Upon his return, he worked as a copywriter at Bloomingdale's before joining the editorial staff of Esquire magazine. In 1950, he joined BBDO, where he later served as vice president. He left in 1979 to work as an independent consultant.While a freelancer, he wrote what is considered one of the most successful soft sell advertisements in American history. Known as the "Two Young Men" letter, it ran in newspapers for nearly 30 years and earned an estimated $2 billion in subscription sales.
Though the two-page "Dear Reader" letter does not explicitly state that the more successful man subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, the rest of the advertisement laid out all the ways one could better oneself through a subscription. He took the idea from an ad written by Bruce Fairchild Barton for Alexander Hamilton Institute in 1919, which started: "From a certain little town in Massachusetts, two men went to the Civil War. Each of them had enjoyed the same educational advantage, and so far as anyone could judge, their prospects for success were equally good."