A MESSAGE FROM THE DMEF CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT
Dear Members of the Direct / Interactive Marketing Community,
Here at the DMEF, we’re witnessing a resurgence of support and involvement from the direct / interactive marketing community and setting the stage for new and innovative programs and activities to significantly enhance the pool of entry-level talent entering our field tomorrow.
If you were fortunate enough to attend the Annual Awards Dinner on Saturday evening, October 13 in Chicago, then you know firsthand that we’re breaking all records as a result of the outstanding patronage by those in this dynamic community. We say thank you to each and every one of you who have supported the DMEF to generate this new spirit and vitality. This is the level of support we need to maintain in order to achieve the true vision and potential of the DMEF, to meet the drastic need for talent … today and in the future.
For those of you who missed it – we invite you to support us by making a year-end donation, and to join us at our events scheduled for 2008. You’ll hear more about that in the coming weeks.
Nothing speaks to the new face of the DMEF as the fresh, new faces of our associates participating in the inaugural Direct Marketing Leadership Development Program, the rotating residency program which places four highly skilled college graduates among four corporate sponsors in the New York area. As part of this program, the four associates attended DMA07 … and experienced the world of direct in a whole new way. As we introduce you to the four associates, we’d like to say thank you again to our four corporate sponsors – Goodman&Company, Harte-Hanks, Scholastic and Wunderman – for stepping up and taking the lead to launch this new pilot program.
And, that’s not all! We’d like to share with you highlights of the exciting activities which took place during DMA07 and most importantly, say thank you to individuals and companies for the phenomenal show of support which helped us exceed our fundraising goal.
So – we invite you to take a moment to read about the results achieved by the DMEF and how we’re experiencing a brand new day at the DMEF.
Terri L. Bartlett, President
Allen W. Dyon, Chairman
On October 13, 2007, the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation elected officers and nine new members to its Board of Trustees. They will oversee the Foundation, which is moving forward in 2007–2008 with a recharged mission to exponentially improve service to the direct / interactive marketing community of educators, professionals, and students.
Al Dyon, chief marketing officer of DMRA was re-elected chairman. He will be rejoined by Gary Laben, president and CEO of KnowledgeBase Marketing, as vice chairman/chairman-elect; DMA President & CEO John A. Greco, Jr. as vice chairman; and Thomas J. “Tim” Litle, chairman, Litle & Company, as secretary. They now will be joined by Treasurer Peg Kuman, president of PDS-Anchor.
The DMEF Board of Trustees also elected the following nine new members:
Craig Dempster, Corporate Vice President, Merkle
Peter Fader, Ph.D., Professor, The Wharton School
Lisa Formica, Vice President, fmi direct, Inc.
Don Hinman, Ph.D., SVP, Product Development Data Services, Epsilon Data Management
Kent S. Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Highlights for Children, Inc.
Ellen Junger, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Hallmark Cards
Beatriz Mallory, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Strategist, HispanAmerica
Donn Rappaport, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, ALC, Inc./DMA Chairman
Jay Schwedelson, Corporate Vice President, Worldata, Inc.
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TO BENEFIT DIRECT / INTERACTIVE MARKETING EDUCATION
It was a brand new day at the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation as more than 350 direct marketing professionals and academics gathered at the Hyatt Regency Chicago on October 13th for DMEF’s Annual Awards Dinner and Auctions, one of the DMEF’s premier events of the year to help raise money for direct / interactive marketing education at the university level. There was electricity in the air as guests bid for luxury items in silent and live auctions. Gary Laben, president/CEO, KnowledgeBase Marketing was the live auctioneer, and was followed by Jon Roska, CEO, Roska Direct, Inc., who lead a rousing Program & Scholarship Auction. More than $540,000 was raised during DMA07. During his acceptance speech, Edward N. Mayer Educational Leadership Award recipient Tim Litle announced a generous contribution of $100,000, to add to the $100,000 in the DMEF’s Litle Family Fund, to pilot an innovative new program to be introduced in the near future.
The other award recipient honored at this premier event was Draftfcb, with Howard Draft accepting the 2007 Corporate Leadership Award.
Contributing to the evening’s success was a number of individuals and companies. [click here for the list of donors]
The surprise honoree of the evening was Joan Litle, Tim’s wife, who received countless acknowledgements from attendees, including numerous donations in her name as part of the Program & Scholarship Auction.
Here’s a peek at the festive evening activities!
DMEF has succeeded in raising the bar for great academic research in the field of direct / interactive marketing. On Sunday, October 14, we hosted our first Direct / Interactive Marketing Research Summit (formerly the Educators’ Conference). The revised format included presentations on best practices in integrated marketing communications areas such as branding, database marketing, word of mouth, and customer relationship management.
Congratulations to Peter S. Fader, The Wharton School, upon receiving DMEF’s Outstanding Educator Award during the Opening General Session, presented by Venkatesh (Venky) Shankar, Texas A&M University, last year's recipient and a member of our Board of Trustees . We welcome Dr. Fader as he also joins our Board.
Following the award presentation, invited speakers included Robert C. Blattberg, (top row, left) Northwestern University; John Deighton, (top row center) Harvard University; Venkatesh Shankar, Texas A&M University; Jacquelyn Thomas, (top row, right) Northwestern University and Koen Pauwels, (bottom row, left) Dartmouth College, all of whom deserve our thanks for presenting at this groundbreaking event, as does our featured luncheon keynote speaker Sid Liebenson, Executive Vice President, Director of Marketing, Draftfcb, and our practitioner discussants, Dan Parzych, Alliant (bottom row, right), Cyndi Greenglass, Diamond Marketing Solutions; Ron Jacobs, Jacobs & Clevenger; Roy Wollen, Database Marketing Consulting, Don Hinman, The Allant Group and George Orme, David Shepard Associates.
A major acknowledgement also goes to the Best Paper authors Debra Zahay, (left photo, middle) Northern Illinois University; Jimmy Peltier, (left photo, left side) University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; and Jack Schibrowsky, (not pictured) University of Nevada Las Vegas for their award-winning Best Paper, Organizational and Strategy Formation Factors Relating to Quality Customer Information in Financial Services Firms, who received their awards from Program Advisory Committee Chair George Milne, (both photos, left side) University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Also, congratulations go to Dingxi Qiu (right, right side) of the University of Miami for his Best Ph.D. Candidate Paper Award for Quantifying the Indirect Effects of a Marketing Contact.
For the first time ever, the Shankar-Spiegel Best Ph.D. Dissertation Proposal Award was announced at the Research Summit. Next year, a leading direct / interactive Ph.D. candidate will be awarded for the best dissertation proposal presented to DMEF. DMEF will award up to $6,000 ($3,000 to the winner(s); $1,500 to the Honorable Mention(s)) in financial assistance to be used for travel, conference attendance, data collection, and other expenses for conducting and presenting the results of the research. Winning candidates will be assisted in gaining the cooperation of D/IM firms for data collection, as well as generous use of databases held by or accessible to the DMEF.
The agenda for the 2008 Summit will be announced in the near future. Proceedings for 2007 are available at the Proceedings link at www.researchsummit.org and will be further updated soon.
As we make our vision a reality to be the go-to source for leading direct / interactive marketing academic educators and researchers, we’re opening up a new dialogue and interacting with many of the professors who were in attendance. We’d like to hear more ideas from more academics to ensure that top students with world-class direct / interactive marketing knowledge graduate workplace-ready.
Case Writers’ Workshop
Co-directors J. Steven Kelly of DePaul University and Susan Jones (above) of Ferris State University led a Case Writers’ Workshop on October 13 to teach new authors how to write a business case for classroom use. Business case writers who write the best business cases in direct / interactive marketing are published in a textbook that’s put out by Racom Communications. Companies such as Art Institute of Chicago, Motorola Catalog and US Bank Corporate Payment Systems were represented as potential business case subjects for presentation at next year’s workshop. Recently developed case studies by previous attendees received First and Second Place Awards.
This year’s outstanding case studies were developed by Blodwen Tarter, (2nd from left) Golden Gate University and Sharmila Chatterjee (3rd from left) of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Visa USA Debit Credit; tied for second place was Coldwell Banker, co-authored by Lisa Spiller, (not pictured) Christopher Newport University and Carol Scovotti, (far right) and Menu Foods, by Martin Topol (far left) and Karen Berger (not pictured) of Pace University. This event was co-sponsored by DMEF and the Chicago Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (CADMEF).
College Days –
College Days (on Sunday, October 14th) provided college students from the Chicago region access to the DMA07 Conference & Exhibition, as well as the chance to hear from direct / interactive marketing practitioners about exciting career opportunities. This year, for the first time, students were invited to DMA07 for two days to explore career options.
CADMEF Executive Director Juliet Hart (above, left) welcomed the students, who heard from Doug Rozen, Vice President/Global Lead, Interactive Marketing at Carlson Marketing (above, right) about the latest trends in Interactive Marketing. Later they participated in a panel discussion featuring Richard Hochhauser former President & Chief Executive Officer of Harte-Hanks, Inc., Ciaran H. Bossom Vice President, Marketing & Customer Experience at Scholastic Corp.’s eScholastic Division and the four Associates in DMEF’s Direct Marketing Leadership Development Program: Francisco Alberini, Andrea Derricks, Kelly Lewis and Nicole Lombardo. The next day, students were invited to DMA07 to meet with select exhibitors who provided them with information about career opportunities, and to attend DMA07’s educational sessions. The event was co-hosted by DMEF and the Chicago Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (CADMEF)
Collegiate ECHO Awards
Christopher Newport University’s student team of Andrew Vannatta, (3rd from right) Catherine Smagala, (4th from right) Marc Aldridge (far right) , and Chris Gregoire (2nd from right) and their faculty advisor, Dr. Lisa Spiller, (front) appeared onstage at the DMA International Awards Ceremony to receive the Gold Collegiate ECHO Award from Chris Long, CMO of Litle & Co. (2nd from left) Their winning campaign, “Charge It Forward with Litle & Co.” garnered top honors in the undergraduate division of this national contest of strategy. Litle & Co. was so impressed with this year’s Collegiate ECHO entries that they’ve instituted cash awards for the competition for this year and next. Mr. Long told E-update, “The creative solutions offered by these students far exceeded our expectations, providing outstanding, insightful, and creative approaches that we will definitely implement in our upcoming campaigns.” The Gold winning team members each received $1,000.
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Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at DMA07 to bid at our auction and congratulations to the winners! For a complete list of the lucky bidders, go to http://www.the-dma.org/dmef/AuctionWinners07.pdf.
And here’s some good news. Because we still have some great inventory available -including in-house seminars by direct marketing greats like Beth Smith of Smith Browning Direct and Jay Schwedelson of Worldata, Inc. along with a Lunch with A Legend, Stan Rapp – we decided to hold another auction from today until November 21. Please visit www.dmefauction.org for all the details.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation or would like to make a donation, contact Terri L. Bartlett, President at dmef@the-dma.org
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