Lou Mastria has been named vice president of interactive and emerging media for the Direct Marketing Association.
Days before the opening of its 2005 annual convention in Atlanta, the DMA announced that Mastria was moving from his former job as vice president of public and media relations into the newly created post.
The executive position is part of an effort by the DMA to take a platform approach to new direct marketing technologies. Mastria’s oversight will take in both established interactive technologies like e-mail, Web marketing and search engine marketing, and more undeveloped channels, such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS), voice over IP, multimedia messaging services (MMS), radio frequency identification (RFID) and podcasting.
“As emerging channels come down the pike, my role will be to figure out what marketers are doing with these,” Mastria said Thursday. “For example, video on demand is changing the nature of mass advertising in fundamental way. As direct marketers, we pride ourselves on being demonstrable and provable, unlike some mass advertising channels. So how do we leverage our expertise in order to show what a new-media campaign did and what audience responded the best?
“Segmenting those channels and leveraging our direct-marketing expertise — those are going to be my missions,” he said.
In his new post, Mastria will report to Ramesh Lakshmi-Ratan, senior vice president of membership and market development. Mastria will continue to serve on the DMA’s management executive committee.
The DMA also announced that Alan Kuritsky has taken over as chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing and communications for the organization. Kuritsky previously served as vice president of marketing and member communications. He will also join the management executive committee of the DMA.
