Two questions I am regularly asked are, "What's the IDM's relationship to the DMA?" and "Why do you compete against each other, shouldn't you be one organisation?" The simple answers are: "complementary" and "we don't, and no".
But of course, life is never so black and white.
My assertion is that the important interests -- of the individuals and businesses that make up our profession and its industry -- are best served by both a strong IDM and strong DMA, independent but working in harmony, using to best effect their core competences, delivering complementary but different objectives.
Early days
Kingston Business School pioneered direct marketing education in the UK, guided by David Miles, Andrew Lock and Derek Holder. In 1981, it launched the Diploma in Direct Marketing, the world's first vocational qualification in the discipline.
Hand in hand with the evolution of direct marketing theory and practice under the auspices of McCorkell, Ross, Bird, Brann, Watson et al (what an agency that would have been), the diploma's success and the accompanying demand for training, led to the Direct Marketing Centre (DMC) being formed in 1987.
An educational trust, the centre's mission was to provide qualifications and training for practitioners and to support direct marketing in universities. The DMC's mandate as the UK body for direct marketing training was endorsed by the British Direct Marketing Association (BDMA), British List Brokers Association (BLBA) and Association of Mail Order Publishers (AMOP).
By the 90s, direct marketing had matured, economically and conceptually, to the point where many felt it should be considered a profession. In 1993, the DMC was awarded institute status by the DTI, thus becoming the UK's sole recognised representative body for the direct marketing profession with the authority to issue qualifications.
Common goal, different objectives
Meanwhile, the BDMA sunk almost into oblivion before being refloated as the DMA (UK).
This extract from a joint IDM/DMA memorandum, agreed in 1994, explains the newly formed DMA's three-fold role as a trade association, and how the two organisations work together to enhance direct marketing's reputation:
"The DMA represents companies, both users as well as service providers, in direct marketing. Its main task is to build a healthy commercial environment for trade and an infrastructure for the industry. Trade protection through legislation, self-regulation and media negotiation coupled with enhancing the public profile of direct marketing are cornerstones of its mission.
The IDM provides education and training for the profession, including individual qualification and information services. The IDM is primarily concerned with the setting, upholding and promoting of high standards of individual professional conduct and competence. Through its professional membership, the IDM is the body that speaks for individual direct marketers.
The aims of the IDM and the DMA are wholly compatible."
Professional focus
As a recognised institute, the IDM's core expertise lies in its stewardship of the science (syllabus), application and teaching of direct marketing. It is also the recognised awarding body for issuing direct marketing qualifications.
The IDM's objectives -- mandated by government and endorsed by the DMA -- stretch from encouraging young people to consider direct marketing as a rewarding career, to providing the up-to-date knowledge, skills and recognition needed by practitioners to succeed in their careers and by businesses to compete.
Going beyond the brief
Direct marketing skills are in greater demand than ever. The online, customer-centric world in which we all consume needs marketers who are masters at interaction, control, continuity and targeting. It is the IDM's role to develop and promote these skills.
It would be folly for the IDM to establish a different regime of codes and separate lines of media negotiation. Equally it is folly for the DMA to establish new and different professional development programmes. Each organisation must stick to what it does best. Each must represent the specific interests of its respective individual and corporate members. For the DMA that means fighting for a healthy trading environment; for the IDM it means supporting the needs of individual practitioners.
It is vital that we all recognise the need to support the direct marketing brand, not divide it.
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