In a move pregnant with possibilities, the 4,000-member Direct Marketing Association in October merged with another national trade group, the Association of Interactive Media.
If the marriage of these two industry segments made sense nationally, one would think that a merger would make equal sense on the local level, right?
Well, not really, says the Northeast Ohio Direct Marketing Association, which has no formal affiliation with the DMA but maintains plenty of looser ties.
“The most formal thing [to build bridges with cyberspace counterparts] we’ve done is to put together programs for the Communications Know Show,” says NODMA president Kim Kaifesh. “And at our monthly meetings, we do probably one or two programs a year related to interactive, Web, e-commerce, all of those buzz words.”
And if she has anything to say about it, that’s about as far as the 200-member NODMA will go in cozying up to the new kid on the block. Kaifesh, you see, is a major accounts manager for a mailing house, Great Lakes Marketing & Mailing in Brunswick. “The mail is not going away,” she says, “which is good for us.”