DMA rebrands to Data and Marketing Association to be ‘fit for the future’

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is rebranding to become the Data and Marketing Association as it looks to create “an organisation that’s fit for future”.

The new brand brings its learning, talent and membership divisions under a single entity in order to appeal to its widening membership place. The changes include the new name, as well as a refreshed logo as the trade body seeks to be the “leading voice for intelligent marketing”.

The DMA’s managing director, Rachel Aldighieri, tells Marketing Week: “We’re creating an organisation that’s fit for the future. It’s a name that’s going to carry us on into the future of data.”

The organisation currently represents more than 1,000 member organisations spanning brands, agencies and marketing services companies, all of which are increasingly using data. However, it is increasingly working with brands, which it claims means it needs to make it clear it focuses not just on direct marketing but data more broadly

Aldighieri explains: “It’s vital that our name represents the industry out there and our membership. When you look to our members, we increasingly work with brands. From artificial intelligence and data services companies right though to traditional media, data is intrinsic to what they do.”

She adds: “A marketer must have a firm grasp of data but equally a data analyst has a firm grasp of the marketer.”

The renewed focus on data is also part of a wider aim to improve transparency in marketing, an area Aldighieri believes is causing trust in the industry to decline. It believes it has a role to play in improving in this area, as well as educating marketers on the correlation between long-term sustainable business growth and trust.

“We’re facing a big challenge around trust as a broader industry. As a trade body [we are] positioning this brand around intelligent marketing and driving transparency,” she says.

“It’s really important that businesses are considering how they build relationships with customers are data.”

She adds: “We’re still battling those areas and a name change is not going to change that. We need to continue to push the industry and build transparency to do that.”

At the heart of the rebrand is a stronger commitment from the trade body to the customer as “data is a customer’s asset”.

Aldighieri says: “We aim to be the most customer-focused business community. We see that as our key differentiator, from informing lobbying all the way to our best practice and our learning propositions”.

The DMA argues that the rebrand and it’s implied expanded remit does not put it in competition with the likes of ISBA and The Marketing Society. Instead, Aldighieri says, “collaboration is key”.

“The last thing the industry needs from us is to be in competition,” Aldighieri concludes.