Those who were there will never forget the day Bob Wientzen was named DMA president.
Despite the best investigative efforts of the trade media, nobody had a clue that he was the one. I had my own list of prototypes, and names to go with them — it had to be a Washington lobbyist, a professional trade association exec or a DMA lifer.
But the DMA board threw a curveball, and suddenly Bob Wientzen was standing on the stage, dressed in his usual colored shirt with a white collar. And he came from the one group none of us had considered.
He was a direct marketer.
And that was an intriguing choice in 1996, as the dot-com and CRM booms were starting; Bob understood the implications. But how did it pan out?
Wientzen has been condemned by some for his performance on the regulatory issues. And there is some evidence that the DMA has let us down — for example, we now have a federal do-not-call list and an anti-spam bill.
But he served during a tumultuous period, and what we ended up with in Washington is better than we had any right to expect.
Go out there and talk to the consumerists, and to crazies like Bob Bulmash. Talk to the scavengers who file class-action suits against firms that spam them (or don't spam them). You will find that we have dodged some bullets on the regulatory front.
Then there's the postal situation. Yes, the USPS remains troubled. But we are now enjoying a period of unprecedented rate stability. Does Bob deserve the credit for that? Well, he sure doesn't deserve any blame.
Of course, no tenure is perfect. Some say that Wientzen was too hell-bent on driving revenue for the DMA, at the expense of other things. Others say that he should have appointed a chief operating officer to manage day-by-day affairs. And he has been criticized for not releasing conference attendance figures. As journalists, we particularly agree with that one.
But as Jock Bickert recently said, Bob was the right man for the time. And we will miss his sense of humor. I've called him late at night on many a stressful occasion, and he has always managed to lighten my own mood.
As with many business and political leaders, his finest moment was during the fall of 2001.
(I must qualify these comments by reporting that my company is a partner with the DMA in several conferences. This avails us little in terms of inside knowledge, but a certain familiarity does exist.)
So who's next? We suspect it won't be another direct marketer. Rightly or wrongly, the DMA board will almost certainly try another model.
Like Bob, though, the perfect candidate will have a grasp of the business. The new chief will have strong lobbying and fundraising skills, and be a good manager.
And how will be the next president be different from Bob or Jonah? In one very key way.
After all the lip service paid to this idea, it's time for the DMA board to hire someone who reflects this industry.
And that means someone whose name starts with the prefix “Ms.”
