Should The Direct Marketing Association (The DMA) Be Saved?
March 24, 2010 7 Comments
Over the past two years, I have asked myself and others this question: “Should the Direct Marketing Association (The DMA) be saved?”
My affiliation with The DMA has lasted more than 25 years. During the early part of my direct marketing career, I appreciated how The DMA connected me with industry leaders who helped me hone my skills, expand my network, and maximize my career prospects. I remember well attending my first DMA Annual Conference in San Francisco and thinking “it doesn’t get any better than this!”
In 2006, The DMA was top of the heap. Incoming DMA chair Markus Wilhelm addressed the DMA06 general session, proudly proclaiming that DMA members had grown direct marketing into an economic force. I was in the room when Wilhelm announced that the direct marketing industry had grown to represent ten percent of the U.S.’s gross domestic product. Attendees answered with thunderous applause.
But fast-forward three and-a-half years to Spring 2010 and The DMA finds its fortunes reversed.
The DMA has disappeared from our radars, the amount of (industry) news it generates has slowed to a trickle. Its 2010 membership directory is much narrower than the previous year’s edition. And the DMA has cancelled scores of conferences.
Worse, I have heard from many executives not renewing their DMA memberships in 2010; with their budgets slashed, they can no longer justify spending thousands to send staff to DMA conferences, let alone cover their airfare and room accommodations for San Francisco (where DMA10 will be held this fall).
Without a doubt, the economy has hit all us direct and interactive marketers hard. Actually, the downturn’s impact has been, to paraphrase a comic entertainer friend of mine, “Krakatoan.”
As is the case with hundreds or perhaps thousands of direct and interactive marketers, I too can no longer justify renewing my DMA membership, nor can I see clear to attending this year’s show in SFO. I just don’t have the financial resources that I used to have.
However, something else has been happening at The DMA. At a time when we all needed The DMA the most, this once-mighty voice whispered. Long gone was the leadership direct marketers had come to expect from The DMA. Instead, some executives say they feel that The DMA is now interested mainly in “maximizing its returns from [their] membership.” In other words, The DMA’s mission is to get The DMA’s members to spend more.
Call me a cynic, but I believe The DMA has put its own needs well ahead of its members. And now the chickens have come home to roost.
The current DMA regime should drive up to Stew Leonard’s Dairy in Norwalk, Conn. and study the words carved into the granite boulder at that famous store’s entrance:
RULE #1: The customer is always right.
RULE #2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read RULE #1!
But what are the chances of that road trip from Manhattan ever happening?
The DMA has announced that it has engaged an executive recruitment firm to find its next CEO. That’s certainly a step in the right direction. But one has to ask: can The DMA currently afford to hire a new CEO? I don’t know the answer to that question. But given how The DMA’s membership department has, over the past 6-8 months, called repeatedly to talk me into renewing my lapsed membership, I have to wonder if The DMA can afford a CEO earning a hefty six-figure salary and the upside compensation and benefits that go with it.
This direct and interactive marketer and once proud member has grown weary and now believes that The DMA has become a Potemkin Village.
Still, nothing would please me more than to see The DMA return to its fighting form. Whether or not hitting the re-set button is successful, The DMA should make the effort to recapture its former glory (and relevance).
That’s my take. What do you think?
Any organization that serves to keep the USPS in business should itself die a slow death.
Wow! Anyone else out there feel that way?
Or do you disagree, hoping instead that The DMA reasserts its leadership in direct and interactive marketing?
Dan,
You and I have discussed this issue a few times and I too have had to make some financial decisions. It is sad to see this organization just stuck in their tracks. If only you could turn back time I can almost point to the moment when the organization started this downward spiral.
They need to start being an organization again and providing leadership to the marketing world. It is no longer just about direct response since IMO most marketing is now response marketing.
Well said. Thank you, Josef.
You stated the problem clearly in your article Dan. The problems at the DMA rested squarely on the shoulders of the recently ousted past regime that you have blasted in this and other posts. That excessive executive salary with zero measurable results went against every direct marketing principal. The new leadership must have incentive based contracts with clear and definable metrics. Now that Greco is Gonzo, as you so eloquently stated, there is a brand new order. The board of directors is focused on setting the future direction. Look at the board. You see top level executives from across the entire industry, from every discipline. Anyone who believes that any single entity is the complete focus is delusional. Like Steve up there, they have no concept of what DMA stands for. Bob Allen as interim CEO has quickly changed the feeling and energy of the staff. Intelligent, open, transparent he has no qualm about cutting the b.s. and the people who are not pulling their weight in becoming the solution. The staff is full of people who know their role and for the first time in five or six years are being allowed to do that without fear and knowing that their effort is appreciated. DMA offers more sessions at conferences for email, digital, SMS and social media techniques then any of the traditional channels. If you do not know that go look at the offerings and count them for yourself. The only change that DMA needs to make in order to be successful again is for the board to select a direction and support the needs to achieve that direction. Eliminate the offerings that no longer make sense and are unprofitable. No organization can be all things to all people. The former leadership did not understand that, continuing to throw money at bad ideas. No longer acceptable.
John, thank you for your well articulated response. Very interesting.
Even if The DMA has cleared the decks, righted the ship, removed the culture of fear and intimidation that allegedly permeated The DMA workplace, and recognized that it cannot be all things to all people, it still has problems more severe than a drought-caused California sinkhole.
How does The DMA reverse trend, regain trust, and actually grow its ranks to reestablish its relevance?
This post has scored the most hits of any post on dansmolen.com. And there is a reason: marketers are truly pissed off at The DMA. Some feel betrayed. It is almost like they are dealing with a philandering spouse: how does the party of the first part forgive the past sins of the party of the second part and learn to love, again?
What is more, The DMA’s membership trends old; it does not adequately reflect the least-senior among us, executives from the Generation Y (Millennial) cohort, that is just now rising through the executive ranks. The DMA doesn’t need to appeal to more furrowed 49 y.o. white dudes like me as much as it must win the hearts and minds of the ambitious 29 y.o. men or women on the fast track and years away from reaching the pinnacle of their careers.
When I was 29, I looked to The DMA for leadership and got it. Today, the handful of 29ers who have awareness of The DMA scoff at the notion that The DMA has cred. The rest of them know little or nothing about The DMA. The DMA needs to reflect the future, and the best way to do that is to appeal to the cohort that will someday lead the world. That’s the only way it could possibly reestablish its unique value proposition.
Ladies and gentlemen, The DMA needs nothing less than a RADICAL TRANSFORMATION and be led by a TRUE REFORMER. DMA members recently got word from The DMA Board that it had started a formal process to pick its next CEO. But I fear that unless people like us actually suggest to the Board the names of possible CEO candidates, they will settle on a slick, corporate, utterly conventional choice.
As far as I am concerned, the next leader cannot be someone eying the CEO post as a plum career move. It MUST BE SOMEONE willing to make great personal sacrifices – willing to roll up his or her sleeves, willing to consider ideas from everyone including the least senior of DMA staffers, and willing to take a huge pay cut (REPEAT: HUGE PAY CUT). Many of us are suffering, and symbolically, the next DMA CEO must reflect our struggles, feel our pain.
This is a very tall order. And we who care about The DMA must press the Board to be bold. Let us start by naming a radical reformer as the next CEO.
(Whew! Need more coffee!)
Excerpted from an email sent by The DMA Board:
The DMA Board will finalize its list of CEO candidates very soon, so please respond to (their call for candidates) poste haste!