The Federal Trade Commission held its Spam Summit last week … zzzzzz … What? Oh, sorry. I dozed off for a second there.
Granted, I didn’t attend the summit personally, but I watched a significant portion of the Webcast for two days and it had all the crackling tension of C-SPAN programming.
What it needed was Mark Felstein. I really missed him last week. For those who don’t remember Felstein, four years ago at the FTC’s first summit—that one had the less lofty title of “forum”—he served two anti-spammers with a lawsuit during lunch on the first day. Felstein was the director and chief counsel of EmarketersAmerica.org, a Boca Raton, FL-based mystery marketing group suspected by many to have been mainly made up of spammers.
Boca Raton was the first indication that EmarketersAmerica.org maybe wasn’t the most pristine group of e-mailers on the planet. What is it about that city that makes it such a haven for spammers?
In any case, on day two, Felstein stood up during one of the panels and loudly accused anti-spam blacklisters—a couple of whom were on the panel—of having a mob mentality and hurting innocent marketers. The moderator dutifully shut him down.
Then after the panel, FTC commissioner Orson Swindle—best name ever for an FTC guy, if I say so myself—had to step in between Felstein and anti-spammer Adam Brower to head off what looked to be imminent fisticuffs.
That was the first problem with last week’s summit: No shoving matches.
The second problem was the lack of booing and hissing at the Direct Marketing Association.
Four years ago, H. Robert Wientzen, then president of the DMA, implied during a panel discussion that prospecting via unsolicited e-mail was a crucial part of e-mail marketing. Let’s just say the crowd was not necessarily a bunch of DMA homeys and if looks were laser beams, Wientzen would have made a good spaghetti strainer after that panel.
But looks are, after all, just looks. Luckily for Wientzen, participants were herded through a metal detector before the event.
I missed Bob Wientzen last week, too.
Instead of Wientzen drawing boos and hisses, we had Jerry Cerasale, the DMA’s senior vice president of government affairs, urging companies to authenticate their servers, improve their security, monitor bounces and make sure partners in e-mail marketing operate on the straight and narrow.
Heck, he even urged marketers to honor opt-out requests faster than the 10 days required by the Can-Spam Act.
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. You’re not making this reporter’s job any easier.
No fireworks. No wacky statements from Wientzen. Civil discourse all the way.
Sigh.
Goodnight, Mark Felstein, wherever you are. You too, Bob Wientzen. Our lives are emptier without you.
