As the Direct Marketing Association prepares to name an interim president/CEO and a permanent replacement for John A. Greco Jr., merchants and consultants hope Greco’s Jan. 19 resignation is a sign of hope for DMA members.
Despite rumors that the DMA would shift its focus away from print and mail and concentrate on digital marketing, DMA chairman Eugene Raitt tells MULTICHANNEL MERCHANT that catalog and direct mail will still be a key focus.
“I can assure you that multichannel retailers and catalogers will be an integral part of our strategy, as our members and prospects will see in the coming weeks and months,” Raitt says.
DMA spokesperson Sue Geramian echoed Raitt’s remarks, saying the new president/CEO would need to be well versed in both traditional and digital multichannel direct marketing “focusing on the areas we intend to grow, and be committed to further developing the power of multichannel direct marketing for advertisers and consumers in the digital age.”
Geramian says the DMA’s search committee will be announced next week. The search for a permanent replacement for Greco is expected to last three to five months.
No specifics were given by Raitt or Geramian regarding Greco’s departure, though Raitt told MULTICHANNEL MERCHANT sister publication DIRECT that the decision to step aside was Greco’s, and that Greco will be paid the balance of his contract. DIRECT reported that based on Greco’s salary from the organization’s 18-month-old filings the payout could easily top $300,000.
Greco’s compensation had been a bone of contention. He received $720,671 in salary and $117,857 in benefits in 2007, according to the organization’s most recently available tax records.
Greco was put on the hot seat this past September, when dissident DMA board member Gerry Pike launched an online campaign and asked members to send him their proxy votes to empower him “to mandate a better DMA” at the group’s Annual Business Meeting in San Diego. Pike did get the votes, and he got back on the DMA board, along with a few other new members and representatives. But the DMA has been quiet about any other developments in recent months.
With an apparent change in direction on the way for the DMA, some members – who would only agree to talk under the condition of anonymity – said they hope the trade group can repair its relationship with the catalog community.
The head of one multititle catalog company believes that Greco’s resignation is “a good thing and will lead to improvement for the organization and thus the industry.” The cataloger also hopes the change is a positive development for DMA’s ACCM show, which was recently rebranded as the Retail Marketing Conference.
One multichannel consultant says Greco’s resignation offers hope for a “fresh perspective will be good as our industry is changing at lightning speed.”
The consultant also hopes new management will open the lines of communication between the DMA and its members.
“It seemed no one from the DMA was willing to talk this last fall when everything was in an uproar,” the consultant says. “I couldn’t get anyone to return my calls regarding ACCM or anything else. I had never had that happen before.”
There’s been an underlying fear by many DMA members that if they were to “talk too loud” about their displeasure with the DMA, they would be ostracized, the consultant says. Some members felt they would be blackballed because of their involvement with the American Catalog Mailers Association.
“Perception is stronger than reality so if it’s not true, it’s still a perception,” the consultant says.