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Roughly a decade ago, I underwent a rite of passage necessary to becoming a full-fledged direct marketing reporter. This rite occurred at the hands of Andi Emerson, the DM doyenne who died last week (directmag.com/news/andi_emerson_0214/).

Andi suffered no fools, and early in my career at Direct I must have screwed up the name of the organization she founded, the John Caples International Awards. Her reaction was quick and to the point: “You’re a shithead.”

I later discovered there were a lot of us shitheads running around. Few reporters, and only a few more people who worked on the Caples awards ceremony, could meet Emerson’s exacting standards. This never stopped her from asking for as much as she could to make every year’s ceremony a success. In Andi’s world there were two kinds of people: Those who were helping her with the event, and those who didn’t know it yet, but who were going to be helping her with the event.

Another time I ran afoul of one of Andi’s casus belli was when I contradicted her about the level of testing I’d seen in DM. Between the marketing campaigns I’d written about, and my first job out of college as a junior magazine circulation analyst, I told her I was sure testing was alive and well.

“You’re old school,” she told me dismissively, saying that magazine circulation was one of the few places where testing was still going on. But for the most part, she said, testing one or more variations on a control and using the results to determine whether or not to change creative was becoming passé, much to her chagrin.

What did we agree on? Politics, a subject we both followed avidly. Andi and I were among a handful of people who gathered at a mutual friend’s apartment to watch the Election Day 2000 presidential returns. As the Bush/Gore contest stretched into the wee hours of the morning without resolution, we all sat glued to the television waiting for someone to tell us definitively what was going on.

What finally broke our focus was the host’s telephone, which started ringing off its hook at around 2:30 am as several of Andi’s friends called, anxiously wondering where the hell she was. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- her peppery-ness, there was no lack of people looking out for her.

So put me in the camp that adored Andi, and which will miss her tart notes commenting on the DM community or national politics. These missives would pop up in my inbox with the occasional signoff “woof!” after a particular trenchant point, as was her wont.

Because she would have demanded it (and because the Caples are a non-profit organization) I’ll give the event one more push:

The 30^th Annual Caples Night will be on Thursday, March 6, starting at 5:30 pm in New York City. Full information can be found here: http://www.caples.org/caplesnight/registration30.html.

As I understand it, the awards do not reward creativity per se. They reward creative-based solutions to marketing problems such as heightened competition in a marketplace, a new product launch or a hard-to-reach target audience. And all entries must drive some sort of measurable response back to the advertiser.

I hope I’ve got that correct, but doubtless Andi will let me know, from beyond the veil, how I’ve once again screwed up. If, the next time I use a Ouija board, the planchette spells out “S-H-I-T-H-E-A-D,” I’ll publish a clarification.

To respond to this column, please contact richard.levey@penton.com