Silver Apples 2021

The 37th Annual DMCNY Silver Apples Awards Gala Honored Marketing Leadership — and a ‘Coming Together’ Milestone

By Chet Dalzell

There was an eagerness on Broadway on the night of November 4—and not just because the white lights of live theater returned to many of the city’s stages.

At the Edison Ballroom, the Direct Marketing Club of New York (DMCNY) held its own return performance; bringing its Silver Apples Awards Gala back to the ballroom after a compulsory hiatus. Vaccinations may have been mandatory, and a pandemic is not over yet – but that in no way diminished the electricity and the anticipation among the more than 100 attendees celebrating 25-plus years of leadership among each of our honorees in data-driven marketing.

DMCNY Club president Ginger Conlon (Genesys) welcomed the gathering, and Vincent Pietrafesa (Stirista) — the self-proclaimed “oldest Marketing EDGE Rising Star honoree” — gave the audience more than just a laugh or three in his opening monologue. He quipped that he was never so happy to see so many competitors in the room and cataloged the decline of Zoom meeting etiquette. Echoing Pietrafesa’s opening sentiments, many attendees said being together at the Awards Gala was so important in just “coming together” as a professional community again. All the better to support marketing education, scholarships, and the careers and contributions of the assembled honorees (follow the links for in-depth profiles).

Here, excerpts from the honorees’ acceptance speeches:

• Mack Burnett III, Business Architect and Growth Hacker, POWERFUL IMPACT, and Adjunct Instructor, Digital Strategy, Analytics, Content and Mobile, New York University (New York, NY):
  “Wow, it’s so nice to be in a room with people who get excited because you sent out a direct mail piece. You are my people! …I feel so blessed to have found this craft, because I don’t feel like marketing is something that you do as a job. Marketing is something that you have to do because you love it.… I turn strangers into friends, and friends into clients,” Burnett said.

   

  “To all the students in the room, if there is something that inspires you to do, then go get it!” he added, noting that he has touched over a thousand students as an adjunct professor at New York University and is most gratified when they tell them they’ve chosen marketing for their career. “Please respect the craft of marketing, take your clients seriously, take your end-user seriously; the biggest challenge that we have coming up is authenticity. If you’re going to be in this craft and take it seriously, you’ve got to care, care, care.”

• Aaron Cano, Senior Vice President, Analytics and Marketing Operations, FreshDirect, and Principal Consultant, AC Consulting Services (Bethpage, NY): Cano has accomplished the heights of business achievement through data-driven marketing; for example, driving a 50 percent increase in response and a 30-percent reduction in time to profit for FreshDirect, and a 25-percent increase in new customer acquisition for JP Morgan Chase. He’s shared the strategies behind those success with grad students at Columbia University when he served as an adjunct professor there. “Being the data guy and being honored by a marketing group is something special.… I’ve had more influence on marketing from the analytics side than if I had marketing [solely] in my title.”Cano recalled that when he interviewed for an analytics role at Chase, his soon-to-be boss, Michael Eichorst, put the words “customer” and “data” together in the same sentence so many times that Cano knew that he found the ideal job and mentor. “We were doing things at the bank in the Nineties that are table stakes today: modeling, segmentation, scoring, and driving the business.… My whole career my goal is to have a place at the table,” he said, adding that analytics has gone from the “backroom” to spotlight status in generating growth.

• Leslie Dukker Doty, Chief Executive Officer, Women in the Boardroom, and Advisory Board Member, ActionIQ (Edgewater, NJ): “This recognition is especially touching to me because I love my work, I love being a marketer.… No matter where I’ve worked or my level of responsibility, the core of any initiative or business strategy has always started with marketing discipline of utilizing data and consumer insights to develop strategies, products, and campaigns that inspire and excite prospects and customers. To me, that’s truly the art and science of marketing.” She went on to describe the launch of Citibank’s Aadvantage card for American Airlines, and her aha moments in creating one of the most famous loyalty marketing programs of all time.
• Deborah Fain, Clinical Assistant Professor, Marketing, Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, and Principal, Infomorphosis (New York, NY): Fain thanked Pace University first among those for whom she is grateful, and why not? “It’s all about the students,” she said. “I fell in love with direct marketing a long time ago. I was a student at Columbia B school, and I was in [a] research class when, lo and behold, our project was MIT Press. I really fell in love: I found out that if we used direct marketing we could match an order with a source. I loved that concept — and I love it still. I’ve marketed just about everything you can imagine, and I’ve never been bored. Sometimes scared to death…” said quipped, then recounted marketing assignments in China, the Philippines and India which, without sharing too much detail, involved supply chain challenges of one sort or another. “You see why I teach now! This [award] belongs to the students.”

• Donna Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Data Strategy, Alliant – The Audience Company (Brewster, NY), who appeared via video: “As others have said before, I didn’t find direct marketing, it found me. In my first life I was pursuing a singing, songwriting career. Nothing like going after a dream. Then reality struck… I went back to school and acquired a toolset for sales and product marketing. [In direct marketing] I had great opportunities and guidance along the way.” At Bank of America, Thomas Publishing and Millard Group, she said she gained a true appreciation for lists and database marketing. “I discovered the creativity of packaging data” — a skill set that she has applied at Alliant for 12 years and enabled her own path of digital transformation. “What a perfect fit, creating and packaging audiences. I’ve been training for that my whole career.”Alliant CEO JoAnne Dunn, who accepted on Hamilton’s behalf, weighed in: “Tenacious D, or Donna — we are so proud to have her on our team,” noting her focus on developing online audiences alongside their offline counterparts, with an emphasis on ethics.

• Trish Wheaton, Principal and Founder, LEANING OUT, and Senior Advisor, The Artemis Partnership (New York, NY, and Toronto, Canada): “When I started my career, it wasn’t too many years after women needing to get their husband’s signatures in order to get a credit card,” she said. She credited Tina Weiner, her boss at the time at Yale University Press, for introducing her to direct mail. “…A job you’re going to love. There were many other glamorous jobs in publishing — where you meet authors and drink wine — but direct marketing, she said, is a really good business for women. I’ve found that to be [true] over and over again. Because it’s accountable, which spoke to me because of my quantitative and qualitative personality. She also cited the late Mona Goldstein, then head of Wunderman Canada, “who took a bet on me as a unilingual American and had me lead a Montreal book account which was all in French. She taught me, throughout her career, the value of integrity in business.” She also thanked Silver (and Gold) Apple Honoree Lester Wunderman for inspiring the entire assembly of data-driven marketers in the room.

• Corporate Silver Apple: Trusted Media Brands (New York, NY) – You may not know Trusted Media Brands on first glance – but we all recognize one of its flagship brands. “We in February will hit 100 years at Reader’s Digest, a massive milestone,” said CMO Michelle Korchinski-Ogden, who was there to accept the award for TMB. “Throughout those 100 years, we’ve really evolved how we market and engage consumers on a day-to-day basis. We’ve exhibited excellence in traditional marketing, and we’ve evolved in the digital space — and it’s been amazing.”The transformation has been a team approach, involving creative, data and analytics. “They help us find the right segments, build the right data sets, so we can talk to the right consumer at the right time… with strong, compelling campaigns… We are entering the OTT [over-the-top television] space, which is very interesting, and should be a great marriage between our legacy brands and the [new] brands we’re bringing under the fold” after its recent acquisition of Jukin Media. “Stay tuned for the next 100 years.”

Joined by their colleagues and family members, as well as previous Silver Apple honorees (more than a dozen in the room, among them Conlon, Dunn, Ruth Stevens, Keira Krausz, Charlie Swift, Harvey Markowitz and this author (Chet Dalzell), some of whom who took turns introducing each honoree, sponsors (Alliant, Digital Advertising Alliance, Acxiom, Wiland, Stirista, Epsilon, Japs-Olsen, McVicker & Higgenbotham), a host of students from area universities such as Pace, Fashion Institute of Technology, and Baruch, and NYU, and DMCNY members and invitees.

A special address by David Allison, founder of Valuegraphics, discussed the importance of self-defined values as a consumer motivator and the drawbacks of relying on demographic profiles to inform marketing strategies. “This is a fundamental problem,” he said. “There was a time when demographics were destiny, but…you don’t have to do certain things because you’re a woman or a man. Or because you’re rich or poor. Because you have an education or you don’t. We need a better way in how we engage with people.” He pointed to thousands of studies and experiences that illustrate how value systems are much more precise of an indicator for human motivation, and certainly so in marketing contexts.

Conlon quoted former DMCNY President Mal Dunn, who said in 1986, of the first Silver Apples Awards honorees, “While they have lent their minds and strengths to the substantial growth of direct marketing, they also have given us something of themselves.” She also used her time at the podium to introduce incoming DMCNY President Alicia Wiedemann (Summer Friday), who will initiate her two-year term in January 2022.

In 2021, we may not yet have turned the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic, but there’s no doubt that the 37th Silver Apples Gala marked a new beginning. With marketing leadership in full display among the honorees, and marketing’s future so clearly in focus in their achievements, there is much anticipation as we approach the New Year. Congratulations to the honorees, and health and prosperity to all.

Chet Dalzell
Digital Advertising Alliance

Chet Dalzell has more than 25 years of public relations management and expertise in service to leading brands in consumer, donor, patient and business-to-business markets, and in the field of integrated direct marketing. He serves on the Association of National Advertisers International ECHO Awards Board of Governors, as a Board Member to the Direct Marketing Club of New York, and is senior director, communications and industry relations, with the Digital Advertising Alliance, a privacy self-regulatory program for data collection for digital and mobile interest-based advertising.

Chet also served on Direct Marketing Association’s Committee on the Environment and Social Responsibility and where he led its Marketing Strategy outreach group. He also served on the United States Postal Service Greening the Mail Task Force, heading its Life Cycle of Mail Subcommittee. He loves UConn Basketball (men’s and women’s) and Nebraska Football (that’s just men’s, at this point), too!