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Marcio Salem To Win Irving Wunderman Award at 29th Annual John Caples International Awards Show

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, February XX, 2007 — Marcio Salem, Founder and President of Salem of São Paulo, Brazil, will be awarded the Irving Wunderman Award for Lifetime Creative Achievement at the 29th Annual John Caples International Awards Show on March 8, 2007 at Manhattan's Metropolitan Pavilion. Salem was selected by the Board of Directors of the John Caples International Awards based on the "tremendous quality of his creative work produced over his career."

Marcio Salem is the first Irving Wunderman Award recipient from Brazil.

THE IRVING WUNDERMAN AWARD
Named after one of the world's most inspirational copywriters, The Irving Wunderman Award is presented by the Caples Board to an individual "who, for a decade or more, has combined the highest levels of talent, imagination, curiosity and human insight into a unique body of creative work."

Marcio Salem graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, a college that has graduated some of the greatest entrepreneurs in Brazil. Before graduating, he took a course in Direct Marketing at the college. His excellent course performance earned him an invitation to work at the largest consulting company in relationship marketing in Brazil. Within 5 years, he became the director of planning at the company. However, with his eye on becoming a creative, he decided to open his own agency.

He worked alone in a room in downtown São Paulo, prospecting clients. It wasn't long before a large company that believed in his experience gave its account to his direct marketing agency. From a room in a building in the center of the city, the company expanded to an entire floor in the same building. The downtown office became too small and the agency had to move to another part of the city. From a base consisting of only one client, Salem started offering his services to large national and international brands.

During this time of expansion, the number of awards that Marcio earned also started to grow. At the age of only about 30, Marcio already had become the most awarded creative professional in Brazil, with campaigns that earned him several gold trophies, special creative prizes and the Grand Prix:

• The "Cups" campaign, developed for the ABN AMRO Bank, earned him a 1st Place at the John Caples Awards and a Gold at the Echo Awards. For this campaign, he imported 5 cups from different countries to illustrate the internationality of the ABN AMRO Bank.
• The "Lost and Found" campaign, earned him a Gold Lion at Cannes, a Gold at the Echo Awards, and a Gold in the Brazilian awards. In this campaign, a team of artists beat up a restaurant guide to give it a used look that served to show how much these guides are used by clients.
• The "Ice Block" campaign was chosen as the most creative direct marking piece in Brazil that year. It consisted of an information pamphlet placed inside a block of ice to sell the IBM data storage system.
• The "Cargo Ships" campaign, where 2,000 ships were imported from Germany to sell the export services of the client; the ships were carefully assembled and sent to the target, a campaign that earned him a Gold at the Clube de Criação de São Paulo awards.
• Another 1st Place award-winning campaign at the Caples, where a company sent the target audience an old typewriter packaged as a museum piece to sell its Internet journalism services.

With these and many other campaigns, Marcio's career, client base and his staff kept growing, and his awards in equal measure. Today his agency has 140 employees and units in Digital, Guerilla and Brand Experience that serve clients like ABN AMRO Bank, MasterCard®, Carrefour and Mercedes-Benz, among other well-known brands.

Marcio Salem's many national and international awards -- Caples, Echos, Direct Lions and a series of national awards -- rank him undisputedly as the most awarded creative in direct marketing in Latin America. He was the first Brazilian jury member at Cannes for the Direct Lions.

Marcio regularly gives lectures in colleges as well as courses in Brazil and other countries in the world. In 2006, he was the youngest professional to be inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame in Brazil.

Marcio Salem is married and the father of four boys. He makes a point of devoting himself with equal commitment to his family, his most important job. In addition to activities at home and at the agency, he has recently been dedicating himself to cinema. In the last two years, he has written and directed several short screenplays. One even won him 1st Prize in the Festival Internacional do Minuto (International Minute Festival). He is currently working on his first feature film.

About The Caples

The John Caples International Awards competition and ceremony, now in its 29th year, awards the individual members of direct and interactive marketing teams judged to have entered the most innovative solutions to real-time marketing challenges.

Regularly receiving in excess of 1,000 entries with the help of several hundred Caples national and regional chairpersons in more than 46 countries, the Caples competition is then judged by more than 100 creative professionals in three rounds of judging. Critically, these creatives evaluate the creative campaign entries by reading about the problem that had to be creatively resolved and then touching and feeling the actual work - rather than viewing digital synopses as in other shows.

The yearly cycle of activities for The John Caples competition includes a Call for Entries created on a pro bono basis and made available to creatives around the world in the 3rd quarter; Caples entry submission deadline of September 30; judging in New York City during the first part of November; and a John Caples Awards Ceremony in New York City.

The 29th Caples Night Award Party will be held Thursday, March 8th, 2007 from 4:45 PM to 9:45 PM at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011. For reservations, call 516-746-6700, x210. For more information, visit the Caples web site at www.caples.org.