When you understand what your customer motivations are and appeal to them, even years later the communication piece can still remain a classic.

Martin Conroy's letter is one of them. He wrote a famous subscription letter for WSJ.  It was not an ad or a TVC but a two page letter! NY Times reported that he passed away on Tuesday. Here's a tribute from the article.

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.

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.’ ”

May his soul rest in peace.