Should you Pay to Speak at DMA09?
filed in Brand, Conference, Thought Leadership on Mar.27, 2009
The Direct Marketing Association, known as The DMA, is the leading trade association of “business and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques”. Even in the digital age, Direct Marketing (DM) remains a huge business. As you can read from their site, expenditures by U.S. companies totalled $173.2 Billion during 2007, equivalent to 10.2% of total U.S. GDP. To say that the DMA is a powerful organization is an understatement, but is the DMA introducing policies that could create long term damage to its brand?
Among the year-round slate of conferences, seminars, and educational events, the crown jewel of the DMA is their Annual Conference & Exhibition, known this year as DMA09. I have facilitated DMA sponsored seminars in the U.S. and Brazil and have attended the Annual Conference on many occasions, presenting on a few. It has always been competitive to be accepted as a speaker at a DMA event and the influencers of selection can be reduced to Brand (the power of your company’s brand in the market), Client (the interest the market has in a campaign run by your client), or Money (to what extent you sponsor or exhibit at the event). In 2009, it seems that Money has become a more influential filter for speaker selection as the DMA instituted speaker proposal fees ranging from $59 for council members to $199 for non-members.
The new policy sparked controversy. Robert Rosenthal kicked off heated conversations in Facebook and LinkedIn groups where he wrote:
“The Direct Marketing Association is circulating its call for DMA09 presenters. This year there’s a new twist…the DMA will charge a processing fee for proposal submissions in 2009 to cover the administrative costs associated with managing the RFP process….have they gone too far with this policy? The implications are serious as long term damage to their organization is not out of the question.”
The posts which followed were passionate and largely in opposition to the new policy. This excerpt sums up the opposing argument succinctly:
“Speaking at DMA events is a marketing and networking opportunity. It has brought me can’t-put-a-price-on-it credibility….I’d also like to think that the benefits flow both ways. Surely by traveling and speaking at our own expense, and by sharing what would otherwise remain proprietary information, we render a valuable service to the DMA and its members. Must we now pay, not only to be of service, but to think up and suggest ways to do so?”
Ultimately, the DMA’s Bill Carls, Senior Digital Marketing Associate, posted a response directly from the Office of DMA’s President.
“….We believe most people understand the inherent value of taking a leadership position in the direct marketing community by sharing thought leadership at the global event for integrated marketing. For them, the investment of a small processing fee upfront should not be a real deterrent, even in these increasingly challenging times.”
Weighing the stream of comments from both social networks, it is clear to me that the DMA elected a policy that is contrary to the interests of its members. Except for a few outliers, the majority of entrepreneurial and business-owning DMA members vigorously objected to the new fees.
Capitalism has an interesting personality – the market unceasingly evolves to fill gaps as historical models decay and no longer provide value. Through its new policy, the DMA may be unwittingly contributing to the disintermediation of the conference business.
There are alternatives to incurring big fees and travel expenses to attend a conference when the highest element of value is often distilled to networking. As we all know, networking has gone viral – just witness the conversations on this subject in Facebook and LinkedIn. The DMA is not alone as SourceMedia, IIR, and others are adopting their own “pay to speak” business models.
I was taught at an early age that as soon as you think you are invaluable, you are at your most vulnerable. Conference organizers in the traditional model should take note. There are several avenues through which disintermediation could take place and I will cover a few in the very near future.
March 29th, 2009 on 12:33 pm
IMO this is not a smart move on the part of the DMA. The emergence of new conferences and other networking type groups like Social Media Clubs, Barcamps, and our local Refresh Miami (besides all the online networking you already mentioned) are all free events and have some of the best networking and sharing ideas I have seen. At a time when everyone is trying to save money, the DMA should be taking the opposite approach and charge less rather than more if they want their conference and their brand to remain in the respected leadership role they have worked so hard to get it to over the years.
OK, that’s my 2 cents – Shari
March 29th, 2009 on 2:12 pm
Great points. Perhaps the most salient is how the market (in a perfect and almost brutal way) tends to fill gaps and render obsolete, those models that take their eye off finding new and better ways to create value.
Rather than looking at new ways to create value, with its submission fee, the DMA is clearly attempting to just squeeze more revenue from those that are attempting to create value for the membership.
It will be interesting to see what happens – but I predict a decline in proposal submission numbers, quality, and creativity.
And, as a frequent speaker (albeit not a DMA member) at conferences and seminars, I personally would be looking at other venues to expand my business connections.
April 1st, 2009 on 1:38 pm
If there is a fee to present, can the DMA legitimately limit the commercial messages in the presentation? And if I pay to attend, should I have to pay to listen to someone’s commercial? This could certainly diminish the value of the conference to the attendees.
April 2nd, 2009 on 10:32 am
The DMA is obviously hurting for cash having gone through 2 layoffs over the past year. Still, this effort seems misguided. Speaking at the DMA was always a quiet way to promote yourself and/or your company, but now that speakers will be paying cash to get in, I think we’ve reached a tipping point whereby companies will unashamedly be promoting their services and wares. As the previous writers point out, this will surely lead to self-serving presentations, so quality will go down–and so will attendance, once word gets out that the presentations are becoming more like infomercials than real learning opportunities.
April 17th, 2009 on 1:08 am
IMO this is not a smart move on the part of the DMA. The emergence of new conferences and other networking type groups like Social Media Clubs, Barcamps, and our local Refresh Miami (besides all the online networking you already mentioned) are all free events and have some of the best networking and sharing ideas I have seen. At a time when everyone is trying to save money, the DMA should be taking the opposite approach and charge less rather than more if they want their conference and their brand to remain in the respected leadership role they have worked so hard to get it to over the years.
OK, that's my 2 cents – Shari