One of the organizations expelled by the Direct Marketing Association for failure to comply with Privacy Promise is taking it lying down.
All three organizations have said they voluntarily left the association, and two have accused the DMA of harassing or threatening them.
The DMA announced in November that it had ousted cataloger Sportsman’s Market Inc., Portland Newspapers and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business for noncompliance.
Portland Newspapers spokesman Ted O’Meara said the firm opted not to renew its membership in July. He added that letters from the DMA had been negative and threatening, in particular statements that noncompliance would bring public disclosure.
And Jonathan S. Piper, an attorney for Portland Newspapers, warned the DMA in a letter that the firm will scrutinize all statements made about it to determine if they are tortious.
A spokeswoman from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business also said the DMA was guilty of harassment in its telephone and mail campaigns.
DMA spokesman Stephen Altobelli defended the association, saying it has been talking about compliance with members for two years.
“We made it clear that signing the promise was a requirement of membership and that failure to sign it would result in expulsion, and there would be publicity to that effect,” he said. The association requires member organizations to sign the Privacy Promise, which includes policies designed to protect customer privacy.
Altobelli declined to provide DIRECT with copies of the correspondence.
Randee Sacks, a spokeswoman for Columbia University’s graduate school of business, said the school’s executive education division had in fact resigned its membership and had not been ousted by the association.
Sacks said the organization joined the DMA about a year ago to make use of its training and development resources, which it turned out not to have used as anticipated.
She explained that although the school takes privacy seriously, signing an agreement such as Privacy Promise “is a very extensive legal process for us to go through” – with multiple levels of approval – and when the DMA began its intensive campaign to ensure compliance, the division chose to resign.
“The truth is, we really have felt harassed over the last few weeks as we have been approached about Privacy Promise,” Sacks said. “We felt harassed by [the DMA] to the point that we said it’s just not worth it.”
Altobelli said that since Jan. 1, the school had received five phone calls and “several” letters.
DMA president H. Robert Wientzen commented, “It’s unfortunate if a few companies have handled it poorly. Overall, we had only a few that didn’t chance their stance. It boggles the mind that some folks didn’t want to sign.”
Wientzen acknowledged that the DMA communicated many times with some companies, but added, “It was designed to be helpful.”
What about people who feel the DMA should simply have used Privacy Promise as a sort of seal of approval rather than choosing to toss out members that refused to comply?
“The people in Washington are looking for us to put teeth into what we say,” Wientzen answered. “These basic practices are not very challenging.”
Negative Tone
Sacks said she was surprised by the negative tone of the DMA’s official announcement, which stated that the school had belatedly indicated it has a policy not to sign such agreements and would be removed from the association Nov. 30. Sacks said the division resigned its membership, calling the DMA to ensure it had received the notice.
Portland Newspapers opted not to renew because it determined that it could not technologically comply with the Privacy Promise suppression policy, according to O’Meara.
“We looked at Privacy Promise, and we saw that there was one element that we could not guarantee compliance with, so we decided we would not renew,” he said.
He added that the paper “fully complies” with customer requests to opt out and respects all privacy issues.
Piper, the newspaper group’s attorney, denounced the DMA in a letter to Wientzen.
“The notion that a publisher that otherwise complies with the law in all regards will receive unfavorable publicity because it does not adhere to your organization’s protocol can be viewed as nothing short of extortionate – a threat made by someone who, I assume, is paid a tidy salary to grow the number of subscribers,” said Piper, who is with the firm of Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau, Pachios & Haley LLC.
Sportsman’s Market Inc. said in a statement that it had declined to sign the Privacy Promise since its “company policy has always been and continues to be that any customer privacy request is immediately honored.”
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