Press Room

REINVENTING INTERACTIVE
AND DIRECT MARKETING
Edited and with an Introduction by Stan Rapp
Pub Date: November 2009
$34.95, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-07-163802-9
E-Book: $34.95, ISBN: 978-0-07-170338-3

"Rapp compiles the best thinking on a future with low-cost and no-cost connections between products and consumers. Essential reading for marketers."
-Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired; Author, The Long Tail and Free

"A simple concept ties this incredibly useful book together. You ignore this concept,
and this book, at your own peril."
-Al Reiss, Chairman, Reis & Reis Focusing Consultants; Co-author, Positioning

IN THE DIGITAL AGE, EVERY MARKETER
IS AN iDIRECT MARKETER

Direct Marketing legend Stan Rapp teams up with the Direct Marketing Association to address the fundamental truth of marketing today:
Interactive is Direct. Direct is Interactive.

Since his bestselling, game-changing 1986 book MaxiMarketing (with Tom Collins), Stan Rapp has tracked changes in the ever-transforming marketing industry. And now, the game has completely changed yet again. In REINVENTING INTERACTIVE AND DIRECT MARKETING, published in association with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), Rapp introduces a radical new paradigm-iDirect Marketing-which addresses the fundamental truth of marketing in the digital era: Interactive is Direct. Direct is Interactive.

Two marketing disciplines that have been treated as distinctly separate - Interactive and Direct - are actually one and the same. Rapp explains: "In the Internet Age, every marketer is an iDirect marketer. Currently practiced by only a few early adopters, iDirect marketing is the marketing of the future." iDirect is interactive, information-driven, insightful, innovative, individualized, iterative and grounded in what the Internet and direct marketing expertise make possible. It is the most affordable and accountable strategy ever devised to win over brand believers and exceed revenue goals.

The gap between the outmoded assumptions of the mass marketing era and the iDirect more-for-less future is so vast that a team of thought leaders was needed to address it. In REINVENTING INTERACTIVE AND DIRECT MARKETING, luminaries from the academic, agency, and brand marketer perspectives come together to highlight the many aspects of the emerging iDirect mindset. They include:

• John Greco, President and CEO, Direct Marketing Association
• Richard Cross, CEO, Cross World Network; author of Customer Bonding
• Don Schultz, PhD, Professor of Integrated Marketing Communication, Northwestern University
• Lucas Donat, CEO, Donat/Wald iDTV agency
• Michael Caccavale, Founder & CEO, Pluris Marketing
• David Hughes, CEO, The Search Agency
• Michael Becker, Co-founder & VP Mobile Strategies, iLoop Mobile; co-author of Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies

• Melissa Read, Ph.D.,Vice President of Research and Innovation, Engauge
• Jeanney Mullen, Executive Chairwoman, E-Mail Experience Council; EVP & CMO, Zinio and VIVmag

• Joseph Jaffe and Greg Verdino, President, Chief Interruptor & Chief Strategy Officer, crayon marketing consultancy

• Janet Rubio, Chief Insights Officer, Engauge
• Michael McCathren, Conversation Catalyst, Chick-fil-A, Inc.
• Tim Suther, Executive VP, Acxiom Global Interactive Marketing

Rapp's Introduction explains why the integrated agency model is a disaster, offers a surprising picture of the agency of the future, and shows how the confluence of Digital and Direct is the new driver of customer engagement at lower expense and with greater ROI than ever before.

Media has changed. The market has changed. The consumer has changed. And social networking never stops changing. Isn't it time for marketers to start thinking differently about today's requirements for marketing supremacy? Now is the moment to understand and seize upon the reality of the Internet as the center of the universe. REINVENTING INTERACTIVE AND DIRECT MARKETING takes on the frequently asked question: "With advertising and mass marketing as we have known them facing doomsday, what comes next?" The answer is iDirect Marketing and its companion piece iBranding.

Stan Rapp is co-author of six books including Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future and MaxiMarketing, the international bestseller translated into twelve languages. Rapp is a member of the DMA's Hall of Fame and one of only two recipients of the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation's prestigious Vision Award. Advertising Age included him as one of the 101 individuals who shaped the advertising of the 20th century. Rapp, over a 30 year period, served as CEO of two agencies-Rapp Collins and McCann Relationship Marketing-that now generate combined revenue of over one billion dollars. Currently, he is Chairman of Engauge (www.engauge.com) a pacesetting customer engagement agency founded three years ago with private equity partner, Halyard Capital.

The Direct Marketing Association is the leading global trade association of business and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques. Founded in 1917, DMA today has more than 3,400 members from the US and 48 other nations, including half of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations. www.the-dma.org

SUGGESTED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STAN RAPP
1. What is iDirect?

2. What have been the major transformations in the direct marketing mindset since you and Tom Collins started the Rapp Collins agency (now RAPP) in 1986?

3. Which contemporary companies are on the cutting-edge of iDirect Marketing today? What innovative campaigns have they launched that employ both Interactive and Direct?

4. How can marketing managers most effectively use iDirect with reduced budgets in 2010?

5. How can marketers achieve supremacy in the digital era?

6. Which new technologies have had the greatest affect on marketing?

7. How can marketers turn the challenges of the new technologies into opportunities?

8. What is iBranding and how is it changing the industry?

9. How can B-TO-B marketers leverage iDirect to better reach their customer?

Rapp on the ‘disintegration of integration'

Christopher Hosford
October 20, 2009

San Diego-Direct marketing veteran Stan Rapp continues to work overtime brainstorming ideas for direct marketing, including promoting a new conception of direct-digital synergism at the Direct Marketing Association's annual conference and exhibition, running through Wednesday here.

The New York-based chairman of Atlanta-based marketing agency holding company Engauge, who is to deliver a keynote address Wednesday at DMA09, sat down with BtoB to explain his concept of "the disintegration of integration" and how direct marketing needs to go digital to survive.

"It's impossible to truly integrate all the channels that marketers must contend with, including search, e-mail, mobile and social," Rapp said.

"We're putting media ahead of strategy, talking about how to run this mobile campaign or that e-mail campaign," he said. "But where are the big ideas? No wonder CMOs are going crazy."

Rapp's solution is to package direct marketing into two "pillars"-digital and direct-a concept he dubbed "iDirect."

"Without interactive marketing, direct marketing will go under," Rapp said. "The Internet gives direct marketing affordability and accessibility. Direct provides a framework of accountability and addressability. Put them together and we're seeing the birth of a new marketing discipline."

Rapp founded direct marketing agency Rapp Collins Worldwide and later served as CEO of McCann Relationship Marketing. He launched Engauge two years ago, acquiring an assortment of specialty marketing agencies.

Many of his ideas on the confluence of digital and direct marketing, he said, are laid out in a new book, "Reinventing Interactive and Direct Marketing" (McGraw-Hill, 2009), that contains marketing observations by Rapp as well as a number of other digital and direct experts.

To explore ways that digital and direct marketing are informing each other, Rapp and others - approached DMA this year to create the iDirect Leadership Committee. It is co-chaired by Rapp and Tim Suther, senior VP-global multichannel marketing services at marketing services company Acxiom.

"Digital is direct and vice versa," Suther told BtoB, expanding on Rapp's explanations. "The concept is: Successful digital marketing must include the principles of direct. We see some measurement today with digital marketing, but compared to direct it's child's play."

 
Suther said the new iDirect committee has developed several sub-committees to explore public policy and marketer education, in order "to take our ideas and make them real for marketers."