DM Days Keynote Panel to Focus on 'Securing Your Brand Online'

New York City, May 16, 2007 — Designer purse aficionados can tell a fake Fendi from a real Spy Bag. But even the most adept fashion-fraud spotter might be fooled by clever email phishing and efficient Web spoofing. Protecting those customers and their corporate identities is increasingly a major challenge facing today’s brand stewards and marketers. Brand police doubling as keynote panelists will come to the rescue during the 2007 DM Days New York Conference & Expo, which is being held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, June 19 – 21.

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has assembled a keynote panel of online safety experts who will speak at 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 21 to help direct marketers "Secure Your Brand Online — Secure Your Future!" Panelists will discuss how DM Days conferees can protect their customers and brand equity from email fraud, phishing, identity theft, and other fraudulent shenanigans.

The keynote panel will be comprised of moderator Louis Mastria, vice president and chief privacy officer at NextAction, and panelists Peter Cassidy, secretary general of the Anti-Phishing Working Group; Patti Freeman-Evans, a multichannel retail strategy analyst with Jupiter Research; Ben Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for Experian Interactive, Jim Nail, chief marketing and strategy officer for TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony; and Brian Zwit, an executive director on the Standards and Practices team of Consumer Advocacy and Privacy at AOL, LLC.

Keynoters will emphasize a basic, common-sense point: Marketers need to protect their brands online because consumers need to trust that the brand they think they’re doing business with is indeed the brand they’re doing business with, Mastria said. "If a lack of confidence in your brand arises, boy, it is going to be tough to remedy that. If your consumer doesn't feel confident in your online brand, they're simply going to go somewhere else. After all, your competition is only a mouse click away. If you cannot secure your brand, you will pay for it."

While brand protection and data security are not new concepts, the Internet age techniques and tactics for doing so are. "Gone are the days that kids locked themselves into their parents’ basements and hacked into servers for the fun of it," Mastria said. "Today’s cyberspace criminals are organized, devious, and enterprising. A shrewd crime syndicate can hack into a businesses’ server and send out billions of emails before anyone notices, Mastria warned. "The email phishing can look so authentic, customers may not recognize the scam."

"The level of sophistication has gone up, and the threat has grown," Mastria said. But, he added, the tools to combat the cyber mischief have improved, too. One such weapon is email authentication. "That is a substantial way to attack this issue," he said.

Email authentication along with adding firewalls, employing businesses to monitor brand threats, and more will be explored during this keynote, Mastria promised.

Peter Cassidy, secretary general of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, is a business development and product design consultant and director of research at TriArche Research Group. TriArche is an international collaborative of senior consultants engaged in business development and product research in the IT industry. For the APWG, Cassidy employs his knowledge and experience as an analyst, speaker, writer, and commentator on industrial developments and public policy related to information security, financial crime, and their myriad intersections.

Patti Freeman-Evans, a multichannel retail strategy analyst with Jupiter Research, has expertise in creating customer-centric e-commerce sites, integrating channels effectively, developing innovative marketing initiatives, and ensuring high-standard customer service and order fulfillment operations. She previously held leadership positions with prominent companies such as Bloomingdale's and Godiva Chocolatier. She is on the board of directors for shop.org, an organization that serves the online and multichannel retail community and is a division of the National Retail Federation.

Ben Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for Experian Interactive, serves Experian and CheetahMail, overseeing all interactive marketing policy and email deliverability issues affecting the company’s client base. Isaacson’s current industry leadership initiatives include serving as a sender committee co-chair of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), co-chair of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition’s (ESPC) Receiver Relations Committee, and editorial advisory board member to the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

Louis Mastria, vice president and chief privacy officer at NextAction, joined the company as part of its continuing dedication to protecting data privacy and security. Mastria is responsible for oversight and direction of NextAction's information use policy to ensure internal compliance with legal regulations, industry guidelines, and best practices. Prior to joining NextAction, he held several key thought-leadership positions at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), including vice presidential posts in Interactive & Emerging Media and Public Affairs & Media Relations. He led the DMA's policy on email authentication

Jim Nail, chief marketing and strategy officer for TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony, has an extensive background in integrated marketing. His career spans online marketing, market research, brand advertising, and direct marketing. Nail was an analyst at Forrester, focusing on how marketing strategies and tactics must adapt to technology-driven changes in consumer media consumption habits. He helped launch Web advertising network AdSmart, where he served as director of marketing. He planned and managed integrated marketing campaigns at leading advertising agencies.

Brian J. Zwit, an executive director on the Standards and Practices team of Consumer Advocacy and Privacy at AOL, LLC, is responsible for developing kids and teens parental controls, security, safety, and privacy policies for AOL's products and working with the business and development teams to incorporate those policies. Immediately before joining AOL, Zwit was the chief counsel for science and technology at the National Association of Attorneys General. He has extensive legal and chemical engineering expertise.

In 2006, marketers — commercial and nonprofit — spent $166.5 billion on direct marketing in the United States. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures generated $1.93 trillion in incremental sales. Last year, direct marketing accounted for 10.3 percent of total US GDP. Also, there are today 1.7 million direct marketing employees in the US alone. Their collective sales efforts directly support 8.8 million other jobs. That accounts for 10.5 million US jobs.

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