Luminaries Kenneth Cole, Shelly Lazarus and Jimmy Wales to Keynote at DMA07 in Chicago

New York City, June 27, 2007 — The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) today announced a stellar keynote lineup for the DMA07 Conference & Exhibition, which will be held October 13–18 at McCormick Place West in Chicago, IL.

On Monday morning, October 15, multichannel marketer, business leader, and fashion icon Kenneth Cole, chairman and CEO of Kenneth Cole Productions and author of “Footnotes: What You Stand For Is More Important Than What You Stand In,” will give a keynote presentation. Cole’s talk, entitled “Responsible Leadership in Responsible Times,” will follow opening remarks by DMA President & CEO John A. Greco, Jr.

Next, on Tuesday, October 16, at 10:00 a.m., legendary direct marketing ad-agency powerhouse Shelly Lazarus, will address DMA07 attendees. Lazarus, who is chairwoman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, and one of Fortune magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business,” will speak on the “Changing Faces of Direct — Reinventing the Client, the Consumer and the Agency.”

Then on Wednesday, October 17, at 10:15 a.m., NeXt Gen marketer Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, president of Wikia Inc. and founder of the explosively popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, will address a topic dominating the marketing arena today: “User-Generated Media: Leading the Marketing Mix in the Digital Era.”

“We are thrilled to announce these speakers, whose marketing acumen is only enhanced by their unique approaches to the multifaceted, multichannel direct marketing field,” said DMA President & CEO John A. Greco, Jr., noting the matchless expertise of the DMA07 keynoters. “Kenneth Cole’s unparalleled social action has invigorated multichannel marketing and the fashion industry with humanitarian purpose; Shelly Lazarus is at the vanguard of creating integrated multimedia advertising campaigns for some of the world’s most iconic brands; and Jimmy Wales brings a personal passion to open-source media that is propelling emerging marketing practices online.”

Monday, October 15: Kenneth Cole

After a quarter-century in the footwear business, how has Kenneth Cole weathered the stormy fashion scene so well? By putting himself in his customers’ shoes, as Cole puts it. To be successful, he’s stayed in touch with “what they're thinking, feeling, what motivates them, inspires them,” he told the Webzine AskMen.com.

Through this approach, Cole has found a passion other designers typically miss. “It is great to be known for your shoes,” Cole has said. “It is even better to be recognized for your soul.”

Renowned today both as an American designer and a humanitarian, Cole discusses his choice to fuse fashion with social action in the introduction to his book, “Footnotes: What You Stand For Is More Important Than What You Stand In.” Although a marriage between social responsibility and fashion were once considered nearly impossible, Cole explains, “I discovered that the two are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are interdependent. Even today, I know that much of what sustains this company is our belief that we're doing a lot more than just selling shoes, footwear, clothing, and accessories.”

Time and again, Cole has made his commitment and civic courage unwaveringly clear through such ad slogans as “Not Voting Is So Last Season,” encouraging voter participation, and “Shoes Shouldn’t Have to Stay in the Closet, Either,” in support of gay rights.

This same attitude of corporate responsibility weaves its way throughout Cole’s biography. Growing up on Long Island, he worked as a stock boy at a neighborhood shoe store and sold peanuts at Shea Stadium and Madison Square Garden. He later joined the family business in Brooklyn — Candies Shoes — a brand that became a household name during the disco era.

In 1982, Cole founded his own company. Today, the company name and Cole’s philosophy of “when in doubt, pun-t,” serve as reminders of the power of resourcefulness and innovative problem-solving.

Tuesday, October 16: Shelly Lazarus

Shelly Lazarus came to Ogilvy when the agency’s legendary founder, David Ogilvy, still walked the halls, preaching that the purpose of advertising is to build great brands.

After rising through the ranks of account management, and playing pivotal roles on many of the agency’s signature accounts, Lazarus became general manager for Ogilvy’s direct marketing unit in the US. Her success there led to positions of increasing responsibility in the worldwide company, to which she was named CEO in 1996.

Working in both advertising and direct marketing cemented Lazarus’ belief that building brands successfully requires an integrated communication approach driven by a big core idea. This philosophy has stood at the heart of Ogilvy’s business practice, called 360 Degree Brand Stewardship, and continues to guide successful campaigns for most of the largest brands that Ogilvy handles, including IBM, Dove, Kodak, and American Express.

Lazarus has received numerous honors, including Advertising Women of the New York’s Woman of the Year in 1994, the Women in Communications’ Matrix Award in 1995, the Partnership for New York City’s Business Woman of the Year in 1996, and DM Days New York’s Marketer of the Year in 2002. She was also the first woman to receive the Columbia Business School Distinguished Leadership in Business Award.

Lazarus currently serves on the boards of a number of corporate, philanthropic, and academic institutions, including General Electric, Merck, New York Presbyterian Hospital, American Museum of Natural History, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, World Wildlife Fun, and the Board of Overseers of Columbia Business School, where she received her MBA in 1970.

Recently, Lazarus served for five years as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Smith College, her alma mater. She is also a member of Advertising Women of New York; The Committee of 200; Council on Foreign Relations; The Business Council; Women’s Forum, Inc; and Deloitte & Touche Council for Advancement of Women, and past chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Wednesday, October 17: Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales

“We make the Internet not suck,” Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales said, discussing Wikipedia on C-SPAN.

Wales is a colorful, Alabama-born Internet entrepreneur who earned PhD-level finance credits at Indiana University, but never wrote his doctoral dissertation, according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia he founded. Wales speaks frankly about his belief in open-source software and Internet content; hence, he founded Wikipedia and has a new venture — Wikia Search, a service of Wikia Inc. — which he thinks will rival proprietary search engine Google.

“This is fundamental, basic information about the world,” Wales said of search to Fast Company Magazine for its March 2007 issue. “It needs to be neutral, and there needs to be an accountable, transparent, public dialogue about how it’s created.” He further stated, “I trust Google reasonably well, but that’s like saying you have a favorite politician. I trust this politician, but I still want the city council to meet publicly. I still want a certain transparency in how government is run, even if you trust the person who's in charge now.”

Wales plans to build on his open-source vision through Wikia Search, which in Fast Company he characterized as “the search engine that changes everything…Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search.”

DMA07 Program Advisory Committee

The members of the DMA07 Program Advisory Committee are:

· Bruce Biegel, Senior Managing Director, Winterberry Group

· Steve Berg, Consultant

· Scott Delea, Senior Vice President, Adverb Media

· Bryan Eisenberg, Chief Persuasion Officer, Future Now Inc.

· Gabe Greenberg, Global Vice President Strategic Relationships, Vibrant Media

· Peter Johnson, PhD, Vice President, Research & Market Intelligence, Direct Marketing Association

· Nancy L. Maffucci, Senior Vice President-Global Communications, Wunderman New York

· Heather Lloyd-Martin, President & CEO, Successworks

· John Minnec, Managing Director, DRAFTfcb

· Ole Stangerup, Support Manager, Post Denmark A/S, Mediepost

· Ruth P. Stevens, President, eMarketing Strategy

· Vernon Tirey, Senior Vice President of Solutions, Clicktactics, Inc.

About DMA07 Conference & Exhibition

DMA07, the largest gathering of direct marketing professionals, is DMA’s annual conference and exhibition. DMA07 will feature more than 150 educational sessions, plus roundtables, case studies, white papers and research reports. DMA07’s exhibit hall will feature more than 500 exhibiting companies. For more information, or to register for the six-day multichannel marketing event of the year, please visit www.dma07.org or call 1.800.293.7279 or 330.425.9330.

About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) (www.the-dma.org) is the leading global trade association for business and nonprofit organizations that use and support multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques. DMA advocates standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable and appropriate offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the end-to-end direct marketing process.

Founded in 1917, DMA today represents more than 3,600 companies from dozens of vertical industries in the US and 50 other nations, including a majority of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations.

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 gross domestic product (GDP). Today, there are 1.7 million direct marketing employees in the US alone, whose collective sales efforts directly support 8.8 million other jobs. That accounts for 10.5 million US jobs.

The Power of Direct: Relevance. Responsibility. Results.

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