List & Data Council:

The Industry Innovation Award

The Industry Innovation Award is given THIS YEAR to an individual whose products, services or business practices have made a lasting, positive impact on AND REVOLUTIONIZED the list and data industry. The recipient has been integrally involved in creating ways for companies to be more productive and effective in serving their clients and employees. The DMA List & Database Council originally established this award.

This year, the award will be presented at the DMA List Leader event on June 14, 2010 in NYC.

Current Year's Winner

2010 - Phil Wiland, President, Wiland Direct

Wiland Direct has truly opened up new list universes for publishers via their coop. They took a very innovative approach to launching this coop in 2007 and achieved remarkable results for publishers via prospecting and reactivation models. Traditionally, mailer coops focused on the catalog arena but Wiland recognized there was a need for publishers and their circulation needs. Phil "wrote the book" on data modeling and has spearheaded several data-oriented companies..A quote from Phil himself (all true):

I have enjoyed over 30 successful years in the direct marketing business. My first company, Wiland Services, grew to serve hundreds of clients because our software was excellent and our service was superior. In my second career, I founded several successful catalogs. At Wiland Direct, my team and I have combined this unique experience to create a next-generation cooperative database company. We are determined to be the best, and we are dedicated to achieving two primary objectives:
• Help our Members achieve their profit and growth objectives;
• Provide our Members excellent service and produce superior response on high volume.

Phil Wiland began his direct marketing career in 1969, founding Wiland Services to provide technology to direct marketers Early clients included U.S. News & World Report, 3M, Montgomery Ward, and Lillian Vernon. Noted for exceptional software and client service, the company grew to serve over 500 clients. Milestone achievements include the first merge/purge system to utilize artificial intelligence and the first carrier route directory and coding system (before the post office had one), which literally enabled the presort discounts that our industry enjoys today. During the 1980s Phil launched the Colorful Images catalog. Later he launched the Linda Anderson catalog. He also bought and revitalized The Music Stand. In 2004 he sold the catalogs and established Wiland Direct...a "next generation cooperative database company" dedicated to helping its Members grow and significantly improve their bottom line.

Past Winners

2009 - Denny "Denison" Hatch

Since 1976, Denny Hatch has been a freelance direct mail copywriter, designer and consultant. Currently, he is a contributing editor of Target Marketing magazine serving the direct marketing community as well as a feature writer for Catalog Success. In past lives he has been a book salesman (Franklin Watts), an advertising salesman (Library Journal), run book clubs (Macmillan, Meredith, Grolier), been a copywriter for a direct mail agency (The Weintz Company). In 1984, with his wife Peggy, he launched the newsletter, Who's Mailing What! out of their home in Stamford, CT; it was based on his massive library of direct mail samples. To create the newsletter, Denny would read 3,000 to 4,000 direct mail packages a month in more than 200 categories--business, consumer, non-profit and catalogs--and presided over a library of over 200,000 direct mail samples; for a fee subscribers could get copies of any of these mailing packages. In 1992, his company was acquired by North American Publishing Company in Philadelphia where he continued to publish the newsletter, as well as editing Target Marketing and The Directory of Major Mailers and What They Mail. After five years with Target Marketing, the publication was once again highly profitable. He went back on his own in 1996. In 1989 Denny was featured in a front-pa and ge article in The Wall Street Journal, has been quoted in Time, Newsweek, and Forbes has appeared on NBC’s Today program. Denny is a frequent speaker at direct marketing seminars and conferences in the U.S., the U.K, Canada and the Far East. Denny is the author of four business books: PRICELINE.COM: A Layman’s Guide to Manipulating the Media; 2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success (with Don Jackson); Method Marketing; Million Dollar Mailings; He is also the author of 3 published novels as well as editor of and contributor to his great-grandfather’s memoir, Jack Corbett: Mariner.; His current gigs: the 2x-a-month e-zine businesscommonsense.com and consulting for a major defense contractor.

2008 - Scott Chilcutt, mIn

Chilcutt founded Marketing Information Network (MIN) in October 1989 with three employees and a dream. The company’s mission was to create an electronic DataCard System that would cause efficiency "in an industry full of inefficiencies". Today, the DataCard Database is one of direct marketing’s most comprehensive resources for mailing and email lists, as well as insert, statement stuffers, coop mailings along with interactive media rates and information. MIN now employs more than 30 research professionals — using people, not computers, to constantly verify and update more than 55,000 active datacards for access by hundreds of list companies. In April 2008, NextMark Inc. and MIN announced their merger. At that time, Chilcutt took the title of vice president of the Marketing Information Network division of NextMark. He remains employed at MIN’s Edmund, OK headquarters.

For more information, please contact Lisa Merizio Smith at (212) 790-1567.