Joe Cappo

Joe Cappo, award-winning journalist and longtime observer of the marketing business, is the author of “The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age.”

Mr. Cappo formerly worked at Crain Communications Inc., where he held several important posts over a 25-year career. He most recently was senior vice president-international and licensing for the company. In that position, he established licensing agreements that expanded Crain publications to more than 20 countries around the world as well as to most major digital databases. As part of his international duties he also was instrumental in acquiring Crain’s first non-English publications in Mexico and served as that subsidiary’s first president.

He joined Crain Communications in 1978 as columnist for the then newly launched Crain’s Chicago Business. In the intervening years, he served as publisher of Crain’s Chicago Business, publisher of Advertising Age, and group publisher over seven journals. His opinion column, often on marketing related topics, appeared regularly in Crain’s Chicago Business for 25 years.

Before joining Crain, Mr. Cappo worked at the Chicago Daily News, covering crime, politics and general assignments for six years before writing a daily advertising and marketing column for nine years. When the Daily News folded in 1978, he moved his column to the Chicago Sun-Times for a brief time before joining Crain.

A native of Chicago , he attended DePaul University where he majored in philosophy and economics before a two-year term in the U.S. Army. Since leaving Crain, he has joined the adjunct faculty of DePaul University, teaching graduate courses in journalism and advertising in the College of Communication.

For more than ten years, Mr. Cappo hosted “Crain’s American Business,” the inflight audio channel on American Airlines. He formerly broadcast twice-daily business commentaries on Chicago’s FM 100 for 18 years and is the author of “FutureScope: Success Strategies for the 1990s and Beyond,” a best-selling book about the 21st Century consumer.

As a journalist, Mr. Cappo interviewed a broad range of personalities over his career including: Richard M. Nixon, Hubert H. Humphrey, Yogi Berra, Colonel Harland Sanders, Gloria Steinem, F. Lee Bailey, Johnny Carson, Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy and many others.

His most recent book, “The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients and New Consumers in the Post-Television Age,” was published by McGraw-Hill and is also available in Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and Bosnian. The book, now in paperback, has being used by several universities as a text or required reading in advanced advertising courses.

From 1998 to 2000, Mr. Cappo was world president of the International Advertising Association, the only global organization covering all elements of the advertising business. He also served on the IAA Executive Committee for more than 10 years and was instrumental in founding the organization's Chicago chapter. Mr. Cappo is a past president of the Association of Area Business Publications and has served on the editorial and international committees of the American Business Media, the international committee of the Magazine Publishers of America and the board of the Chicago Advertising Federation. He currently serves as vice president of the Off The Street Club, a 109-year-old organization that serves disadvantaged children, and is a former board member of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago .