ARGI exhibited at the DMA Annual convention held this year at The Moscone Center in San Francisco. The weather was unseasonably warm and the mood of attendees decidedly more upbeat than in the past 2 years. Consensus seemed to exist that the economy is brightening and that marketing spending is beginning to recover.

Larry Kimmel, newly appointed CEO of the DMA, set the tone of the conference in his key note address yesterday. He spoke about the imperative for change by business in general and amongst marketers in particular. Any reader of this blog knows that change management has been a theme of this blogger and was the essential underpinning of ARGI's introduction of Acuity. Kimmel spoke with confidence, poise and unbridled enthusiasm. In the words of one trade journalist, he gave the equivalent of a half-time "pump-up" speech. In a departure from the past CEO speeches, his talk was less about the state-of-the-union of the DM industry and more about the ascendancy of DM as the rightful leader in the marketing communication mix. He even offered his own definition of DM as a "channel-agnostic approach to driving maximum customer satisfaction and optimal marketplace results".

Shown above are veteran ARGI booth staffers Hank Garcia and Kirk Schuh.

All the Best,

Ray