We quit the DMA 6 or 7 years ago. The foot soldiers were great but too many of the mucky-mucks were insufferable snots. When a members’ revolt evicted the top guy, I hoped some sort of sanity might start seeping in.

Emily Dickinson was right. “Hope is the thing with feathers.” 

This week the DMA wrote to ask us to rejoin. Good idea, but, alas, the execution is a deadly direct mail package resembling the “we’ll almost pay you to subscribe” mailings from Time Inc. magazines.

Are we going to rejoin the DMA? Not yet. We’ve discovered that somehow we manage to get along just fine without the DMA. At least I think we do. There may be a compelling case for membership but I can’t imagine what it is and, apparently, neither can the DMA. Here’s what the mailing looks like:

Ghastly, ain’t it? And it’s from the association that represents direct marketers.

There’s no teaser at all on the OE, not even a hint of the freebie worth, apparently, $470. And there’s no hint anywhere in this package of what it might cost to reup. It’s probably a lot more but let’s say it’s $2,000/yr for an agency our size. Over three years, we’d pay $6,000. In other words, the DMA could easily afford a much better package than this.   

Two sheets of paper, each printed one side only, are the guts of the mailer. All the printing and imaging are in a sans serif face. (Sans serif body copy is hard to read and reduces readership.) In a list of seven “benefits”, the $470 Fact Book premium is #1; benefits #2 and #3 are concerned with speaking at DMA events. Nothing in the list of benefits is explained in any detail at all.

· Waived charges for speaking proposals? When did they start charging for that? How much? 
· Agency-specific intelligence? Such as what? An example or three would be great. 
· One Special Interest Council seat? What on earth does that do for me? 
· You’d think they’d talk a bit about the Fact Book, even show it. A $470 premium is a big deal but they treat it as if it was no more important than a free pencil.

There’s an odd branding issue in this. A few years ago the DMA decided to be The DMA and it’s in their DNA, I guess, because their website’s URL is still www.the-dma.org . On the other hand, maybe they had to insert a “the” into the URL because plain old dma.org belongs to the Dayton Microcomputer Association, dma.com takes you to Del Mar Avionics, and dma.net dumps you at Digital Marketing Associates.

But now, at least in this letter, the “the” is out. Note how and where “the” disappears in this mailing and how its absence makes the language awkward:

· “Without DMA, you’re just not getting it.”
· “If you’re not in DMA, you’re missing out.”
· “Agencies have changed since you left DMA.”

The “the” isn’t needed when DMA is an adjective as in “DMA Membership”. But when it’s a noun, the missing “the” is a real clunker, as if an Eastern European ESL student were speaking: “Agencies have changed since you left Direct Marketing Association.”

The letter is signed by a vice president. It should be signed by the President. The vp’s signature is in black ink which looks scratchy, downscale. Blue ink, and there is blue elsewhere on the signature page, would look a lot better.

I think I know what happened. A committee got its hands on this mailer. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I hope this campaign works. With or without our little agency, we all need the DMA. 

P.S. The package was addressed to Mason & Geller Direct which we haven’t been for a couple of years. We’re the Lois Geller Marketing Group now.