With three months before the Direct Marketing Association ends its chapter program, some regional DMAs are scrambling to figure out how they’ll run with no support from New York.
The DMA announced in October it was launching an affiliate network.
At the same time, the DMA was quietly pulling the plug on its chapter program, under which regional associations received financial, staffing and advertising collateral support from the national DMA. Chapters have until the end of the DMA’s fiscal year on June 30 to run independently.
Seattle and Florida went independent immediately. Southern California and Ohio decided to reorganize. Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta and Northern California have yet to figure out a clear path to independence.
“The chapters were losing money,” said Ken Ebeling, DMA vice president membership development. He declined to specify how much.
The chapters also represent a period when the DMA was on an acquisition binge in a quest for growth under former president H. Robert Wientzen. From 1996 to 2003, the DMA acquired three conferences, four trade associations and seven regional DMAs.
Ebeling added that the chapter program was not only a money loser, but that the biggest local associations, such as New York and Chicago, rejected it. “We couldn’t connect the dots across the industry because we couldn’t get the major players to participate under that particular structure,” he said.
Indeed, many DMers groused that the DMA’s chapter program was a heavy-handed attempt by the national organization to control regional associations’ activity and agendas.
“We never wanted to become a chapter because we didn’t want dictated from back east what meetings we could have or if we could comp someone a membership,” said Steve Stallman, president of the recently reconstituted DMA of Southern California.
When the DMA pulled the plug on the chapter program, the Southern California DMA chapter closed down.
The Southern California DMA’s members then joined the Los Angeles DMA and the Los Angeles DMA changed its name to DMA of Southern California. The group is now a national DMA affiliate.
The DMA’s chapter program is also generally viewed as a bureaucratic failure by most of those involved.
For example, the Florida DMA happily went independent last August, said Keith Fletcher, president of the FDMA.
“We had a lot of problems [with the chapter program],” said Fletcher. “Say we had an event on Tuesday of next week. They [members] would get a postcard on Wednesday of next week. Now that we’re doing it ourselves, our attendance is up, our membership is up, we’re doing phenomenally well.”
Ebeling conceded that the DMA didn’t deliver on its promises to chapters.
“It was not a well-run program,” he said. “A lot of the things that chapters were supposed to get, they didn’t get. A lot of the things the DMA was supposed to get, we didn’t get.”
Under the DMA’s new affiliate program, for $500 a year per association, members get a subscription to the DMA’s In Marketing magazine, access to the DMA’s ethical guidelines, regular conference calls with other affiliate leaders, and occasional special offers from the DMA, such as discounted memberships in the national association.
“We’re building out the benefits as we go,” said Ebeling. The DMA currently has 16 affiliates and each has different strengths in different areas, he said. “All of them feel like they’re a little weak in the government affairs area and all of them want us to figure out a way to help deliver benefits to their members along those lines.”
Meanwhile, executives running other regional former chapters are scrambling to figure out how to get their organizations running independently.
“The bottom line is chapters have never made money,” said the DMA of Southern California’s Stallman. He added that the going rate to have an outside company come in and run an association is between $4,500 and $5,500 a month. “Since none of the chapters were making money, how could they possibly have an extra $4,500 a month?”
Moreover, some executives currently running regional DMAs don’t have the time to take on more responsibilities.
For example, Anna Brantley, an account executive with Experian, and Yasemin Williams, a senior account executive with InfoUSA, are sharing responsibilities for running the Atlanta DMA, which was acquired by the national DMA in 1997.
However, their jobs are too demanding for them to continue after May, said Williams.
“When the DMA presented us with the idea of becoming an independent chapter in late fall, it sounded like a full-time job. It already takes enough time to get the luncheons together. Neither one of us wants it to be more work than it already is,” said Williams. “They’re really pushing to get us to be an independent chapter.”
Though the co-chair is typically next in line to be chair, Williams doesn’t want the job. She said the Atlanta club’s last event for the year is in May and that she thinks it is in danger of dissolving after that.
Ebeling said the DMA is looking for new leadership for the Atlanta chapter. “We feel pretty confident we can keep that one going,” he said.
Meanwhile, the DMA Southern Ohio Chapter plans to rename itself the Ohio Valley DMA at the end of May, and will include members mainly from Columbus and Dayton, but not Cincinnati, said Doug Peters, the chapter’s chair.
“I think including Cincinnati was a mistake,” he said, adding that such a large geographical area makes it difficult to plan events because of the travel time involved for members. “It’ll be easier for us to work with a smaller base, but where people are closer together,” he said.
Another chapter struggling with geography is the Dallas/Fort Worth DMA, said Gary Hennerberg, who is on the Dallas chapter’s advisory committee.
Hennerberg said attendance at Dallas/Fort Worth DMA events has waned dramatically recently.
“Dallas is unlike New York in that we’re sprawled,” he said. “In Dallas, there is no central downtown. We have clusters of business centers 60 miles away from one another.” The Dallas/Fort Worth chapter is currently leaderless.
Ebeling said he believes that chapter can be salvaged, as well.
The Northern California DMA lacks the funds to reincorporate as an independent assocation, said chairwoman Laurie Beasley.
As a result, the group is looking for charter sponsors to support it in return for tabletop advertising space at events, she said. Beasley added the organization needs between $3,500 and $5,000.
“As soon as we have these funds, we plan on filing for non-profit status and breaking away as our own chapter,” she said.
