Direct marketing industry veteran Allen M. Greer died July 14 of a heart attack during a liver transplant. He was 67.
The New York native was a fixture at McGraw-Hill for about 20 years, according to friend and fellow direct marketer Ralph Stevens, managing partner of MKTG Services, New York.
Greer started with McGraw-Hill in the 1960s, moving to San Diego in the early 1980s for a direct marketing position with Zoobooks. While in New York, he was president of the Direct Marketing Club of New York in 1978 and won a Silver Apple Award from that organization in 1989.
Around 1985, he and a few others founded the San Diego Direct Marketers Association. In 1993-94 he was president of the association. Greer also won the Margaret Sellers Award for the outstanding direct marketer of the year in 1998 from the SDDMA.
Most recently he ran his own consulting business, Allen M. Greer & Associates Inc., and served as education chair of the San Diego association.
“He was an icon, and he will really be missed,” Stevens said. “He was a great direct marketer, a great copywriter and a major contributor to the direct marketing industry.”
Greer is survived by a wife and two grown children.
