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In this Issue:
Members Wowed by VDP at February 12 Meeting
Record Number of Entries for Annual Awards
Conference Committee Scores M. L. Carr for Conference
NEDMA Membership News
Getting "Ink" in NEDMA News
NEDMA Thanks our February Newsletter Sponsors, Oceanos Marketing and Association Benefits Group:
Oceanos Marketing, 45 Accord Park Drive, Norwell, MA 02061 Phone: 781.871.7500 www.oceanosmarketing.com
We are specialists in evaluating and procuring targeted mail and email lists for our clients. With our proprietary Oceanos-150 List Evaluator™ we will recommend the best lists for your target audience. Increase your response rates by contacting Brian Hession or Ken Pope to receive a "Free Analysis of Your List Rental Program".
Great News for every NEDMA independent contractor or small business owner! NEDMA members can receive health insurance benefits at group rates--and members save typical small business fees. The fee savings alone may pay for your annual NEDMA membership!
Enjoy the best prices in Massachusetts for Health Insurance
CALL Association Benefits Group, our benefits partner at 866-303-2810, or ViSIT their website at www.associationbenefitsgroup.com for an on-line comparative quote of all plans, or CONNECT from the NEDMA home page at nedma.com
Members Wowed by VDP at February 12 Meeting
If you've ever created a sales letter with a personalized field (such as "right there in your town of {CITY, STATE}"), then you've had a brief introduction to VDP. Now, imagine that instead of sending out a letter with a few variable fields, you send out completely customizable four-color documents -- brochures, catalogs, or whatever else you can imagine -- pulling together text and illustrations on the fly. Imagine each document tailored uniquely to each reader's demographic, psychographic, or interest profile. It's happening now, and there are NEDMA members doing it.
According to Robert Reeder, CIO/CTO of W. A. Wilde Company www.wilde.com, marketing by VDP can affect more than your bottom line. It changes the way your organization views its marketing documents, and it influences the relationships between your departments. At NEDMA's Data Forum on February 12, Reeder walked members through the philosophy and process of VDP, from viewing content as digital assets (and managing it that way) to choosing and managing the technology, to educating the creative team that finds itself in a world where the old models no longer apply. One-to-one marketing in print is not only technically possible. The savings in postage, print overruns and warehousing can make it cost-competitive with traditional print and pick-and-pack work.
Following the Data Forum and dinner, James Hackett, recent Direct Marketer of the Year, co-founder of Direct Results Group, and current VP, Business Development for SourceLink, Inc. www.sourcelink.com, delivered an interactive session designed to get people to see the possibilities in the new world of VDP. Highlights included several successful direct marketing projects. He closed the session by forming an impromptu panel to field questions. The panel consisted of himself, Robert Reeder, and Sheryl Read, Vice President of Business Development for CopyCop, Inc. www.copycop.com, which as a vendor of digital printing services, is active as a VDP vendor. CopyCop, Inc. also sponsored the meeting.
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Record Number of Entries for Annual Awards
The NEDMA Awards for Creative Excellence received 320 entries for the 2004 competition -- more than it has ever received.
Members submitted entries in the traditional categories -- Print, Direct Mail, Broadcast, Interactive, Integrated Multimedia Campaigns, DM on a Shoestring and Technique. But this year's competition also featured a new category for creative proposals that never got produced: Great Concept, But...
The judging, by an independent panel of experts, has already taken place. The judges are Guy Arceneaux, Senior Art Director, Euro RSCG Brann; Reggie Brady, President, Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions; Patrick Fultz, President, Grayhair Direct; Bob Gaffney, President, Action Marketing Consultants Inc; Shelley Davies Gentile, President, Wygant Davies Gentile Direct; Perry Lowe, Marketing Professor, Bentley College; Josh Moritz, Partner, Customer Growth Partnership; Dick Ossen, Marketing Professor, Bentley College; and Jane Weber, Ask Jane Direct.
All winners will be notified March 8, and the awards ceremony will take place at the Roxy, upstairs at the Tremont House, Tremont Street, Boston, MA on April 8, 2004. Every entry that was submitted will be on display in the Awards Gallery in the Empire Ballroom of the Tremont House at a cocktail reception from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. A small number of companies will also have tabletop displays for your viewing.
NEDMA's annual Awards Show has a reputation for being both a good time and an excellent networking opportunity. For those who want to support the Awards and raise their visibility at this gala event, ad space is available in the Winner's Book. For more details about sponsorships, tabletop exhibits or Winner's Book advertising, email Pat Lee at or call Pat at 781-237-1366. Ad reservations and payment must be received by Wednesday, March 10.
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Conference Committee Scores M. L. Carr for Conference
Gary Lubarsky, Principal of Oceanfront Creative and NEDMA's Director of Conference Program and Promotion, announced at the February 12 meeting that our 2004 conference would feature former Boston Celtics star M. L. Carr. The NEDMA Conference will be held on June 17-18, 2004 at Bentley College in Waltham, MA.
Carr's keynote presentation promises to challenge NEDMA members with the proposition "Although Nobody's Perfect, We're All Role Models." The title of his presentation is also the daily pledge of his new company, WARM2Kids www.warm2kids.com. "One good action, however personal," says the description on the WARM2Kids website, "will lead to other good actions, and can ultimately make the world a better place." It's a philosophy that was dramatized in a touching film called Pay It Forward, in which a young boy changed the life of his community by "repaying" favors in advance.
WARM2Kids is a web-based resource on family issues with 24-hour advice, support, guidance, discounts and savings, celebrity stories and expert answers to questions. It has featured appearances by Marie "Free" Wright of Black Entertainment Television, soccer star Mia Hamm, country singer Tim McGraw, chef Todd English, Boston's Mayor Thomas Menino, and former Celtics star Larry Bird. The WARM2Kids company supports itself with membership fees ($35 per year), corporate sponsorships, and partnership fees. It donates 25% of its net profits to the WARM2Kids Charitable Foundation, which supports youth education and mentoring.
Carr played professional basketball for 10 years and was instrumental in three Celtics championships. On retirement from playing, he became a coach, a job he pursued until founding WARM2Kids in 2003. He is the founder of two charitable foundations and the recipient of many service awards, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Image Award, the Toastmasters' Communication Award, and Camille Cosby's Citizenship Award. He is also the author of three books: Don't Be Denied, Enough Is Enough, and Winning Through Persistence. And NEDMA's got him for our conference!
Contact Pat Lee or Beth Drysdale, for information about sponsorships and exhibit space at the conference.
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NEDMA Membership News
1. Member Promotions and Appointments
Scott Moore was promoted to Assistant Vice President of Customer Acquisition and Corporate E-Commerce at Specialty Catalog Corp. in January.
Robert S. Johnson, Vice President of Mailing and Fulfillment at George H. Dean Company (Braintree, MA), was recently elected to serve on the Executive Board of the Greater Boston Postal Customer Council (PCC). An acknowledged direct mail expert with nearly 40 years of experience, Bob will work with Board Members, direct marketers, mailers and postal officials to address the challenges facing our industry today.
Hill, Holliday announced the appointment of Nancy Harhut as Senior Vice President, Executive Creative Director in Relationship Marketing. She will oversee creative duties on all RM accounts at Hill, Holliday in Boston, including Dell, FleetBoston Financial, Cognos, The Boston Globe/Boston Works and LoJack. Nancy will report to Kelly Mahoney, Executive Vice President, Director of Relationship Marketing at Hill, Holliday in Boston. Nancy, a past President of NEDMA, was most recently Senior Vice President, Creative Director at Mullen, Wenham, MA, where she worked for more than eight years. In addition to starting and growing the agency's direct marketing creative capability, Harhut oversaw work on behalf of The GM Card, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, EMC, Colgate, Nextel, Wachovia, SciFi Channel and Rational Software, among others.
Oceanos Marketing, a leading list brokerage firm, has relocated to larger facilities in Norwell and tapped list industry veteran, Ken Pope, as Director of List Services. Brian Hession, a principal in the firm, said, "The addition of Ken Pope to our staff of list consultants is great news for our client base. Ken has been providing strategic list direction to hundreds of New England based companies over his twenty five year career." Oceanos Marketing received accolades in 2003 when Hession was the recipient of the NEDMA Prodigy Award.
Preston Lawrance has been confirmed again this year to serve as VP Legislative Affairs for the VT/NH Direct Marketing Group, representing the organization's views at the State House in Concord, NH. Lawrance's company, Lawrance Direct, LLC has recently relocated from North Commercial Street in Manchester, NH to 127 Elm Street in the same city.
Deb Goldstein, President of IDG List Services in Framingham, MA, was named to the Board of Directors of the List Leaders Group. The mission of the List Leaders is to serve the Senior Management of the list community.
Yellowfin Direct Marketing has hired Bob Cargill as Senior Creative Director. With more than 20 years of experience in the direct marketing industry, Bob has written, directed or overseen the creative development of projects that have been honored with dozens of awards for creativity and results, including three Best of Show Awards from NEDMA and the Axel Andersson Award for direct mail excellence from Inside Direct Mail. Prior to joining Yellowfin, he served as Senior Creative Director at L. W. Robbins Associates. He has also run his own agency, Cargill Creative, in addition to playing instrumental roles in the creative departments at Sullivan Creative, CPS Direct, Warner Bros. Publications and RCA Direct Marketing. He is a past President of NEDMA.
2. Members in Print and On Stage
Sullivan Creative is pleased to announce it has made the Boston Business Journal's Book of Lists for 2004. Sullivan Creative has been named as one of the Largest Graphic Design Firms in the Area.
Margie Gallo Dana published her first book, Put It on Paper! Every Person's Guide to the Printing Industry, in January. It's a plain-English guide to working with the printing industry. Margie's book is a compilation of almost 70 of her weekly e-columns, the "Print Tip of the Week." Margie helps printers communicate better with their customers and helps print customers work better with commercial printers. Writer, speaker, and printing consultant Margie Gallo Dana is the founder of Dana Consulting.
Leslie Ament-Ruder is scheduled to make a presentation at an International Marketing & Corporate Communications meeting in Singapore in April. This month she also presented "Marketing Intelligently With ROI" at an American Marketing Association meeting. Her most recent published article, in Top-Consultant News, is "Marketing ROI: How to Set Goals, Develop Plans, Measure & Quantify Results." She is a partner at Hypatia Marketing & Communications, Calculating ResultsTM.
3. Member Milestones
Steve Tharler (NEDMA president, 1987-1988, and NEDMA Direct Marketer of the Year, 1998) reports that his agency -- Tharler/Opper Marketing Communications & Design, the Natick, MA, firm he co-founded with June Opper -- will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in April. In the past two decades, the versatile duo has served a variety of local and national clients, including: NFPA, Joslin Diabetes Center, PCWorld (San Francisco), National Wildlife Federation (Vienna, VA), Polaroid, Anti-Defamation League, UnitedDC (Houston), IDG List Marketing, IDC, Harvard Business School Publishing and Inc. Business Resources.
4. Member Sightings
Michael Veit, Direct Marketing Manager for RSA Security Inc. recently braved an ice storm to speak at an event sponsored by B-to-B Magazine. In addition, he was quoted in the magazine's February 9 article on email marketing in the age of CAN-SPAM, which can be found at http://www.btobonline.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=12276. Member Deb Goldstein was also quoted in that article.
5. Member Deals
Sullivan Creative has added two new clients, Oasis, Billerica, MA and Datawatch Corporation, Lowell, MA. Oasis is a not-for-profit consortium that develops e-business standards. Datawatch works to help organizations increase productivity. Sullivan has offices in Watertown, MA and Dunbarton, NH.
6. For Rent
Sullivan Creative, located in Watertown Square, has two available furnished office spaces to rent within its Class A office. The space is beautifully decorated as well as functional. It includes a shared conference room, all office amenities and assigned parking. Please contact Pam Sullivan at 617-926-9899 to set up an appointment.
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NEDMA would like to thank ExactTarget, Inc. www.exacttarget.com for sponsoring all of our broadcast emails.
Getting "Ink" in NEDMA News
If you've gotten a promotion, signed a new client, written a book, won an award, learned a foreign language or otherwise distinguished yourself, tell your colleagues! "NEDMA Membership News" is a free service for and on behalf of NEDMA members so we can all keep up with each others' professional lives. Members can also use this space to advertise items of particular interest to NEDMA members, such as office space or used equipment.
We must reserve the right to edit any submissions. And the free advertising feature is not intended to promote your business (you can buy an ad for that). It's limited to the kind of things you might ordinarily find in a classified section. Send your information via email to . Be sure to provide as much information as you can, including the URL for your company's website. If you want to send your information as an attachment, please use Microsoft Word or any text editor and save the editor the trouble of retyping PDFs, since he doesn't have any software for extracting text from such files.
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Submit your information by the 15th of the month for publication in the last week of the month. We are striving for more precision in the publication schedule.
For information about NEDMA, visit nedma.com or call 781-237-1366.
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