11 responses so far ↓

• 1 ianchughes // Oct 9, 2009 at 10:30 pm

  As a quick update, the US DMA has an excellent role model for how to engage the rest of the world. He’s called Barack Obama and he just got the Nobel Peace prize.

  What would Barack do?

• 2 merrylaw // Oct 12, 2009 at 5:05 pm

  As a small business that markets to other countries from a U.S. base, there is no effective international component from the DMA addressing my needs — and hasn’t been for about 2 years. I hear that Jodie Sangster is very competent and very knowledgeable but as I understand it she wasn’t hired to address the broad spectrum of international DM. Perhaps Ms. Sangster’s title is the major issue from outside the U.S. but the issues are much greater than that or the lack of focus on my needs, as evidenced by the proxy fight now going on.

• 3 Direct Marketing International Online DMIonline.net — Hungry for debate? Head for Hungary! // Oct 12, 2009 at 8:08 pm

  [...] (November 5-6) this year includes DMI magazine’s top-level online debating platform – Talk Back! – in its live format. This first ‘Talk Back Live: Budapest’ event will be hosted [...]

• 4 karieb // Oct 12, 2009 at 9:52 pm

  I remember sitting down with John Greco and a small group of other ‘Internationals’ when he first took over the DMA. We were all DMA members and wanted to ensure that the International group were on his radar and that he saw the opportunity (as did we) in expanding overseas and jointly creating content, service and events to this end.I remember chiding him that the International content of that year’s DMA Conference (I forget the city) had been dropped and he promised to ensure there was a strong International track the following year … there wasn’t. I’m not pinning all of this on John Greco,but sadly it’s been downhill since then. The US DMA has become just that, a US Association.The International Council of which there were many, dare I say passionate, members has been disbanded. The US DMA’s focus seems to be on lobbying and protecting some purely domestic member groups interests. The whole Gerry Pike affair has exposed that there does seem to be ‘trouble at mill’within all ranks of the DMA.
  I am not sensing any appetite for anything International at all.Thank God for DMI Magazine - I anticipate a lot of kvetching in San Diego, blunted by copious amounts of Tequila on the Monday night. Cheers!
  Karie Burt - Senior Executive Vice President President of NON-Compliance.

• 5 markbridges // Oct 12, 2009 at 10:06 pm

  The U.S. DMA seem to have been at a loss in the past few years in terms of articulating their strategy for serving members interests in regards to international markets. Assuming of course that there is a strategy to articulate. (Some observers might simply note that they seem to have been at a loss, full stop).
  The job title of “V.P. of Global Compliance”, if truly intended to define the role of the “DMA’s ambassador to the rest of the world”, seems unhelpful at best. To be charitable it probably speaks more to the apparent trend of the DMA aspiring to corporate grandeur at the cost of remembering that it is foremost a membership association, rather than to Dr Evil’ish aspirations of world domination. I hope its Number One.

  Mark Bridges. MBDirect International.

• 6 sallyhooton for HGL // Oct 13, 2009 at 2:38 pm

  Like many ‘veterans’ of this business, I recognise that evolution is superimposing an informational shift to the web. It behoves any organisation dedicated to globalising the principles of marketing to become inclusive rather than exclusive. That means abandoning any imperious attitudes and philosophies . . . and shifting emphasis to elements that include internationalism. (I don’t see any relationship between Barack Obama and the ongoing influence of our direct response fraternity/sorority. Our charge is educational, not political.)

  HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS (via email)

• 7 dsacks // Oct 13, 2009 at 2:59 pm

  Perfect timing! My column this month for DMI deals with Plain Speaking. Before jumping to any conclusions, what exactly does “Global Compliance” mean? I have no idea. Perhaps the DMA intends to comply with global privacy issues, regulations, etc. Granted, the DMA has always taken an American-centric view since its membership is American and its mission statement is to assist American companies, etc. etc. And it has in the past been accused of U.S. imperialism. I remember a case with an association in Brazil. But let’s find out. Has anyone spoken with the new Global Compliance officer? Perhaps I should have done more research before “Talking Back??”
  Notice I refrained from using annoying buzzwords like “due diligence.”

• 8 thomhansen // Oct 13, 2009 at 6:14 pm

  I have to admit I was reticent to comment as my opinins seem to be the same now as in the past few years - only a bit more validated: the DMA here in the US is NOT interested in helping companies expand globally - except perhaps when they can get a trip in to China ….os some such place.

  From my minimal involvement in the past, I learned very quickly that if there were no financial gain for the DMA - they simply were not interested. While our passions were truly for the International Direct Marketing World - the DMA could only equate that in terms of $$$. If a meeting or a summit had NO MAILERS/CLIENTS but 100 paying vendors all vying for new busienss and the bottom line of the event was in the black - they would consider it a success - we called it a vendor fest and a failure. Truly - on different plains.

  Ideally I would like to see and International Organziation or association that encompassed the entire world, and was not US or UK centric, but inclusive of all of the other major players in the world. Perhaps it is time to build an assocaition on our own somehow - if not for anything other than to communicate with each other and by each other. Just somethign else to talk about over Diet Coke for me and Tequila for Karie next Monday … I think it may be time.

  As far as the Global Compliance Officer goes, since the DMA does not relate to me at all - I doubt that it means anything to me at all - but I will give her the benefit of the doubt while we get to know her … maybe she can join us next Monday?????

  Thom Hansen
  Direct Media International

• 9 garydold1 // Oct 13, 2009 at 7:35 pm

  I felt I had to read all the comments before I address my the issue at hand regarding the DMA’s stance on Global complience and its position on being the Global Direct Marketing leader.
  Like Karie Burt, I along with others of the then International Council Operating Committee attended the meeting in which Mr. Greco committed himself and the DMA to the advancement of the international direct marketing industry. For what ever reason, sortly thereafter, the DMA almost took a reverse position and deflated the educational events that had been developed as well as the other like forums around the country. Networking had also been a very viable function for new and old international direct marketers to gather and learn the how tos and where tos. That no longer exists at the DMA. As Karie Burt so appropriately stated there were so many impassioned members of the disbanded DMA international council that we somehow have rejoined to support the new and fast growing international direct marketing educational efforts of the DMI. In my view, the success of the first event of the first IDI event in New York City this past June Shows me that the DMI is definately going in the right direction. Our international direct marketing industry will once again have a resource that we all need to grow and succeed.

• 10 sallyhooton for GP // Oct 14, 2009 at 9:07 am

  From the reading it appears that DMA relates poorly to the global DM community, characterized by presumption and diktat. In that sense, take no offense. Many of our Association members feel that’s how Management relates to them too.
  GERRY PIKE (via email)

• 11 charliep // Oct 15, 2009 at 4:21 am

  I have heard all these comments before, and agree with most of them for the most part. Some are intensely inaccurate, but only because the DMA did not help itself because it did not tell the membership what we did accomplish around the world, and what we did obtain to help our members abroad. FEDMA membership and access to information, contacts, and lobbying clout in Europe. Compliance information on the increasingly complex privacy issue. UPU leadership and access to postal systems’ leaders globally. Much tighter relationships with DMA’s and their members world-wide. Phones were answered and questions answered when I called, and members from the DMA received cordial welcomes and assistance when they traveled. I held off several plans to “take over xyz market” with over-ambitious misguided plans to “open up” in other countries and substituted open and reciprocal relationships which redounded to the benefit of many members, I believe. As one commenter has noted, the one that got by me unfortunately was Brazil.
  Through my office members could contact experts in government affairs, dm, law, marketing data, list availability, lettershops, creative agencies and so forth worldwide. My department’s motto was “Anything about dm in 72 hours, anywhere in the world.” And we delivered. Many members used us.
  We opened up the Spanish language education track at Annual through my meetings with Mary Teahan of Argentina and Joost van Nispen from Spain. That has spread dm knowledge in many directions, and provided opportunities for much transnational networking.
  I established the popular Meet the Global Leaders session at Annual, which became the core beginning of the excellent International Council reception.
  With Merry law and contributions from many others like Daniel Rutenberg we established a course in international dm which ran until I left and now seems to have been abandoned, unfortunately.
  I represented the DMA’s members and the industry in the formulation of the Safe Harbor program under which most European personal data now flows to the US for processing and marketing use. And we established the DMA’s own Safe Harbor certification program.
  I represented the industry at the Department of Commerce when the China-USA Free Trade Agreement was negotiated and obtained in that document the right of US data processing companies to own 100 per cent of the shares of their own investments in China. Think Acxiom, Experian, and many others.
  Through our network of contacts we helped the Echo Committee launch its “Echo Ambassador Program” and recruit unprecedented numbers of foreign entries and new judges in countries where Echo was literally unknown. Pity the DMA now makes it prohibitively expensive for more people to access the Echo winners library to learn from these brilliant campaigns.
  I write all this not seeking anything from this audience but only to remind you that the DMA did a great deal in the international arena that helped the industry. Some of it perhaps slightly off-target, none of it of use to everyone, some of it of use to none of you, but that’s what associations do. And you can’t please everyone all the time, but you to do so at least part of the time.
  Finally, a change was ordered some 2 years ago that resulted in the crippling of the Council system. It was all too visible. Every Council must be a “thought leader”. International wasn’t ready to produce a “thought leader”; maybe because it’s not specialty skill based on technology like SEO or Email. It’s a vast set of experiences and a huge knowledge base of cultures that you can’t learn in school or study in webinars, but have to live. It doesn’t improve ROI or increase response or develop a new communications medium.
  Who needs thought leadership to know that world-wide flows of business ideas and marketing skills and talent is now borderless? Or that the worlds’ economies are totally interdependent? Or that many of the businesses that both made up the bulk of business for everyone in this field as well as the source of new names, the publishers, were disappearing? “Thought-leader” I suspect was code for “the guys who will head the big agencies and Fortune 500 marketing departments”. And that won’t build an association.
  At some point in the future, if not in two weeks, then within 2 years, this group will have an opportunity to recreate what it had at the DMA, but it’ll have to be digital, online, multi-media, multi-national and interactive. And very sophisticated. What will be the “international issues” that you as a group feel need addressing and you’ll pay to have addressed?
  I hear in this forum a focus on only one thing: networking. Associations do that, but they can’t survive on that alone. That’s called the conference business. Associations also do advocacy, research, education, and branding. It can’t be a long-term survivor doing only one of those things, nor can any one part of the organization.
  So there is the brutal challenge writ large. What are the common needs and goals of the group beyond just finding new clients. It has to go beyond that.
  So here’s the challenge in detail. You need an association or grouping to do what, exactly? Identify which of those 5 things above need to be done, in what places, with what people, how often, and ask if we can find the money to get someone to run it. Form a Board that will develop a set of strategic goals that participants in this forum can agree to; then put a budget against that, and pass the hat to get it started.
  I suggest you first start by supporting DMI in its efforts, as in New York last March, and make the next event an even bigger event. Between now and then, get down what I’ve outlined above and make the debate of the next steps one of the topics of that meeting.
  I’ll participate. The subject needs a home.

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