Project Head Start

It’s been said almost to the point of being a cliché that no one grows up wanting to be a direct marketer. But the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation is trying to change that.

It started a program last year to lure top college graduates into the craft. The initiative known as the Direct Marketing Leadership Development program minted its first four DMers in July, and they’ve all taken jobs in the industry.

Starting last summer, the lucky grads did three-month stints at each of the sponsoring companies: consulting firm Goodman & Co., publishing concern Scholastic, direct marketing agency Wunderman and DM services provider Harte-Hanks.

How were they recruited?

DMEF touted the program at 17 colleges and universities, and drew 87 applicants. After an initial interview DMEF narrowed the list to 16, then four. Each grad was paid $45,000 for the year.

“The purpose in doing this is to create an exciting, highly visible program that captures attention not just from students, but really top students,” says DMEF president Terri Bartlett. “We looked at what characteristics define a leader in business. Their interests and their go-getter attitude is what we were looking for.”

They were also required to have a 3.0 grade point average or higher.

Were these candidates aware of DM’s sometimes negative image?

“Yes, but that came when they went home and talked to their parents. That’s where the negativity came in,” Bartlett says. “We had the four associates give a presentation to the DMEF board in June and they reiterated that the image of direct marketing is actually very strong among students.”

That’s for sure. These newbies don’t associate direct marketing with telemarketing calls at dinner, off-target direct mail, overpriced mail-order trinkets and cheesy infomercials.

And they’re more interested in the interactive future than the sometimes sordid past. The four came to the program as virtually clean slates.

“We joke that the night before the interview we were all Wikipedia-ing ‘direct marketing’ to find out what it was,” says Nicole Lombardo, who has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and international business from Villanova University. “I knew I wanted to go into marketing, but I didn’t know what kind,”

She’s now a new business associate at Wunderman.

Andrea Derricks, who’d earned a bachelor’s degree in American studies at Columbia University, had to convince her own family about her new vocation.

“When I told my parents I was going into direct marketing, they said: ‘Oh, you’re working with junk mail,’ ” she says. “But when I came to it, I had a completely different perspective.”

What was that?

“In general, I wanted to be in an industry that was growing and changing a lot,” she says. “And right now with all the changes in new media and the ability to communicate with people in so many different ways, and measurement continuing to get better, it’s just a great place to be.”

Derricks took a job as a marketing associate with Goodman & Co. after finishing the program.

Another prospect, Kelly Lewis, had been getting DM experience as an intern at LexisNexis. She just didn’t know it.

“I was helping at a really small publishing group,” she says. “They had one marketing person and I was her assistant. “This was my first exposure to marketing.”

Lewis, who had double-majored in English and Spanish at the University of Virginia, then read about the DMEF’s program. “It sounded exactly like the things I was doing in my internship,” she says. “That’s when I realized what I’m doing and what I like doing is direct marketing.”

The outcome? Lewis has joined Barnes & Noble as an assistant manager of promotions.

Francisco Alberini majored in business and international business at New York University and was impressed by DM’s financial accountability.

“The program started and I began to understand what direct marketing is all about,” he says. “It’s really the perfect mix of finance and marketing. You can put things into numbers and say ‘This is the kind of return we’re going to get on this investment.’ That’s not something I thought marketing was.”

All four graduates say the program gave them valuable experience they could have received no other way.

“I got to see the client side, the agency side and the consultancy side,” Lombardo says. “And besides the experience, there were the contacts. We were really positioned at each of these companies with people who were very high up. And that’s an opportunity we probably wouldn’t have had right out of college.”

What’s in it for the sponsoring firms?

“The most important thing I get personally is giving back to the industry for the enrichment it’s given me,” says Susan Goodman, principal of Goodman & Co. “But as a company, we also benefit because we get the opportunity to work with these extremely bright, motivated people at the outset of their careers.”

She adds: “It helps us be sharper because they’re looking at everything with untrained eyes — so they ask lots of questions. It helps even my most junior people train others. We also put them on billable projects so we get a bright person who’s a capable contributor.”

For this year’s round, the DMEF leadership program has accepted three graduates who’ll do four-month rotations at each of three sponsoring firms: Goodman & Co., Kraft Foods and Scholastic.

The program is limited to the New York area. But next year DMEF aims to expand to Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles or San Francisco, Dallas and Seattle.