Edition:: UK |; Asia

Jobs

Account Manager - Recruitment Ad Sales: £24000-£25000
Senior Producer: £45000-£55000
Direct Media Planner: £40000-£45000
Digital Account Manager: £35000-£40000
Contract Communications Manager (Marketing / Branding): £150-£200

DM, Data and Beyond

US DMA = Deep Doo-Doo

Comments:0 Add your comment

The US Direct Marketing Association certainly seems to be in the wars at present. After a job lot of redundancies earlier this year comes news of a major PR fracas in the trade press, with former board member Gerry Pike baying for blood over the US DMA’s ‘budget-buster dues and conference fees’.

I’ve been privy to some, but not all, of the Stateside DMA machinations, and concede that Mr Pike has a point – the US DMA’s financial and identity pressures are indeed troublesome. But why all this talk of re-branding the Association as the Digital Marketing Association? Given that an estimated 22 per cent of US households have no internet connection (2008 Nielsen Claritas Convergence Audit), and the still millions more are only light users, having the DMA put all of its eggs in one digi-basket is surely a recipe for disaster.

Call me old fashioned, but why is ‘direct’ apparently becoming a dirty word in some quarters? What happened to appropriately tailoring your proposition and choosing the most appropriate marcoms channels for your target audience? Be it via mail, e-mail, SMS, print, inserts, telemarketing or face-to-face – or any combination thereof, for that matter - why are some advocating jettisoning sophisticated, multi-channelled marketing best practice in favour of a simplistic, digital-dominant marcoms model?

Yes, digital’s a very big and important marketing channel. But unless customer journey mapping and planning has suddenly become entirely redundant, looking for a ‘magic’ channel bullet when what’s required is constant analysis and innovation is just plain dumb.

So all best wishes to our colleagues at the US DMA. I hope y’all can get your house in order toot sweet. But please resist digital’s alluring siren’s song. Choosing this as your sole focus will end in tears for all concerned, I believe.

Published Oct 05 2009, 08:47 AM by Mark Roy

save it on Add to Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

Stumble

share on

Facebook

Comments

No Comments

To comment on this post you have to be logged in

Top of Page

Search Community

About this blog