Lawrence M. Kimmel has been selected as the new CEO of the Direct Marketing Association. Kimmel, who had most recently served as chairman and CEO of direct and digital agency Grey Direct Global Network, will officially start on Aug. 2 and will be based out of the organization’s New York City headquarters.
Kimmel comes to the DMA with an agency-focused background. Before taking the chairman and CEO position at Grey Direct in 2000, he spent seven years in senior management positions at Draft Worldwide. He was also founder and president of Unimark, a direct marketing, promotion and advertising agency.
In a brief interview with Direct Newsline, Kimmel identified the need to establish direct marketing’s relevancy in the minds of a wider range of marketers.
“Direct marketers foretold the future,” he said. “We always knew behavioral insight, coupled with quantifiable results information, was a better go-to market strategy. Now most of marketing is either direct or becoming direct. I would suggest that all search engine marketing, e-mail, mobile marketing, is direct response marketing.
“And yet, despite the fact that it is all becoming direct, some people don’t define themselves as direct marketers. They do as digital marketers, mobile marketers, application developers, but they may be on the cutting edge of direct marketing. They have to understand all of the value we can provide to them.”
Several times, Kimmel stressed the need for participation and collaboration, at one point referring to the direct marketing community as a “wiki world”. There is a greater demand for education and information, and collaborative involvement in legislation than ever before,” he said.
Kimmel acknowledged the organization’s recent rough times. It ended the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009 – the most recent for which numbers are available – with a deficit of just under $4 million, nearly twice that of the previous year (http://directmag.com/news/dma-financial-not-pretty-0714/).
But DMA officials have indicated that the organization has made steps to mitigate this, even if the fiscal year just ended on June 30 of this year will still show a shortfall.
“I’m happy this organization has figured out how to do more with less, and is on much firmer financial footing than it has been in the past,” Kimmel said. “Kudos to everyone who has made this organization stronger.”
Kimmel was reluctant to give details on plans before he officially started, but he did indicate that the DMA may well be adding staff in the foreseeable future. “We used to have more people, and no doubt we will have more again,” he said, although he did not indicate which departments might benefit from such augmentations.
For now, Kimmel is focused on driving attendance to October’s annual conference in San Francisco where, he said, he hopes “to have some surprises and buzz worthy things.”
Kimmel will be taking the title of CEO only: Previous DMA leaders have been given the joint titles of president and CEO. “It was my decision to call me CEO [only],” he said. “I have been at the C level for a long time. It makes for a shorter business card.”
Bob Allen, the interim CEO has been helping with the transition and will continue to do so after Kimmel takes over on August 2. “He’s done a fabulous job thus far,” Kimmel said.
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