[Re: Loose Cannon: DMers Say Goodbye to the Mouse House, Direct Newsline, Monday, July 30, 2007]
I just read your commentary about the switch in venues for the foreseeable DMA fall conferences — this year named DMA ’07 and next year… well, we’ll see.
I couldn’t agree with you more! I was one of the most vociferous complainers about the last fall conference in Orlando in 2004, and I would have been again if we had gone back there. In my opinion, the city is not conducive to “working conferences”! Most of the hotels are not a “walkable” distance from the Convention Center, and those that are — to a New Yorker that is — require climbing over traffic barriers and crossing though planters filled with who-knows-what wildlife — again from the perspective of a New Yorker!
The lure of the golf courses and the water sports and — yes — the lure of the little mouse all make getting and keeping appointments difficult. The restaurants are not used to accommodating breakfasts for ten, lunches for twelve — in an hour or less — and dinners for twenty with lots of good wine and well-cooked cuisines that can rival some of the gastronomic centers of the U.S. Other guests in the hotels are dressed casually and generally surrounded by little kids. They are there for vacation and are having a good time.
We are there — for the most part — to get work done that needs face-to-face meetings, and those meeting can sometimes be tense. They aren’t enhanced by happy, shrieking children in various stages of bathing attire being chased by caring parents who thought that at least here they could relax a little!
All of those are reasons to eschew the venue for our major conference of each year. An article in the newspaper isn’t. This is another example of the DMA developing it’s own language to further it’s agenda while leaving the rest of us members completely in the dark! The Sentinel took the heat for an infraction committed four years ago. The hotels and the Chamber of Commerce can’t address the infraction and are left scratching their collective heads. Now they know how many of the DMA members feel.
The DMA needs to learn what direct marketers have known forever. You need to be open and candid with those who support you. You need to communicate with them as equals, and work for the good of everyone involved! Keep up the good work, Richard! Someone needs to tell them regularly that they aren’t fooling any of us — perhaps only themselves!
Linda Huntoon
Executive Vice President
Consumer Brokerage
Direct Media Inc.
Greenwich, CT
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It seems as if someone at the DMA has had a burr in its trousers for quite some time. Personally, when I have such a burr, I usually either take it out or change my pants.
As I said in my speech at the Merit Direct Co-op earlier this month, all media are on the defensive when it comes to the more efficient advertising that direct marketing represents over, say, advertising in some dying local newspaper.
As to the city selection, I would go to the largest catalog (b2b and b2c) database and see which city is the most responsive on a per capita basis.
Though we may end up in Peoria, IL, or Pocatello, ID, we should reward that city with our convention business. Then, even if the local paper writes nasty things, there would probably be a parade route for the direct marketers entry into the city if catalogers included a notice saying we were coming to town, and handing out coupons along the parade route.
Do it just like when the circus used to come to town. We could have floats with those big balloons, wild-eyed spammers in cages, and catalog models waving from the floats.
Of course Greco would have to learn to twirl a baton, but it’s easy when you have a burr in your trousers.
Not that I have an opinion.
Mark Amtower
www.EpiphanyBook.com
Highland, MD
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