At their annual conference’s luncheon yesterday, the folks at Direct Marketing Days in New York presented a video of Jay Walker’s career. But Walker himself–named Direct Marketer of the Year–spent no time in his speech traipsing through the past.
Instead, he laid out his vision of the future–a future already here, he said. “The direct marketing industry is in the middle of enormous” changes, Walker said. He was talking, of course, of the Internet.
Walker envisioned a tomorrow where so many things DMers are used to paying massively for–postage, paper, printing, lettershop services, toll-free calls–will be free because they will be taken care of on the Internet. In addition, direct marketers will hold no inventory, and prepress costs will drop 90% (and the work will take 15 minutes), Walker predicted.
In being honored yesterday, Walker was recognized for his innovations in the industry. Those include his early work at Folio: (sister publication of DIRECT), connecting Federal Express with catalogers, making “till forbid” magazine subscriptions a reality with his company NewSub Services, and, of course, letting customers name their prices with Priceline.com–whose March IPO made Walker worth billions.
Several of Walker’s visions for the future addressed things that Priceline.com already does. Those include consumers demanding their own price for products across the board. “Fixed prices are dead–if they ever existed at all, they’re gone,” Walker said, referring to price tags as “an anachronism.”
Walker commented that no one is as prepared to meet these challenges as are direct marketers. “There are enormous fortunes to be made for those direct marketers” who know how to lead in a customer-focused environment, he said.
DMDNY donated a $10,000 grant in Walker’s name to New York University’s direct marketing master’s program, to be used for scholarships.
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