The Direct Marketing Association yesterday named 15 marketing professionals to serve as its Internet Segment Advisory Committee, the first of eight such panels to be formed this year to provide the board with industry expertise in key areas.
In December, the DMA reformulated its 40-member board of directors to make the group more industry-focused and quicker to market in terms of solving industry problems. Previously, it had specific committees made up of a variety of members that met on similar issues, but there was little or no direct link to board members. The new board oversight committees, however, will be responsible for “looking after what these groups do and presenting to the board subjects that deal with specific issues relating to the oversight committees they sit on,” said DMA president/CEO H. Robert Wientzen.
New advisory committees will be formed in eight industry segments to tap the expertise of individual DMA member senior executives and to involve them in the board’s policy-making development and decisions. The committees are: business-to-business; catalog/mail order; consumer services; information/list/database; international; Internet; not-for-profit; and teleservices/direct response television. Each committee will meet at least twice a year to review policy issues and advise the DMA board.
The Internet Segment Advisory Committee will be chaired by DMA board member Jerry Shereshewsky of Yahoo Inc.
The members of the committee, all of whom are drawn from the DMA’s membership, are:
• Vivienne Bechtold, interactive marketing director, Procter & Gamble Co.
• Gary Beck, executive director, enterprise customer management, General Motors.
• Stanley Braunstein, president, MBS/Multimode, and chair, DMA Marketing, Technology & Internet Council.
• Steve Coffey, vice chairman and executive vice president, Media Metrix.
• George Garrick, formerly with Engaged Technologies (Flycast).
• Andrea Levine, vice president, American Express.
• Worth Linen, CEO, Live Advert.
• Steve Markowitz, president/CEO, MyPoints.com.
• Martin Nisenholtz, CEO, Times Co. Digital.
• Jonathan Shapiro, senior vice president/general manager, DoubleClick Inc.
• Jay Schwedelson, corporate vice president, Worldata/Webconnect.
• Lynn Wunderman, president/CEO, I-Behavior Inc.
The committee also will have the assistance of two DMA staff members: Ben Isaacson, executive director, Association for Interactive Media; and Jeff Richards, executive director, Internet Alliance. AIM and IA are subsidiaries of the DMA. n
