ClickZ: Are You Ready for Your Close-Up?

Internet.com editor Rebecca Lieb points out that marketers - or at least the caricatures of a real marketer, as portrayed by cunny-thumbed trade groups like the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) - are quickly becoming juicy targets for populist politicians. Now that the gun lobby and tobacco companies have been beaten to the point of boredom, telemarketers and spammers are the cause celebre today. After seeing 50 million constituents signing up for the Do-Not-Call Registry, any politico with half a brain knows that this is a drum that can be beat.

The DMA, and other groups that may temporarily act like dunderheads, could take a real lesson from the recent experiences of other industries in which their problems transcended business and legal issues to become political ones. Truly addressing the underlying causes of popular anger would have gone a long way to fend off the industry-killing measures now hanging over, for instance, the tobacco industry. The ludicrous practice of pretending that cigarettes were not addictive or harmful might have been convenient for some years, but it only dug their liability hole deeper. These embattled trade groups often become "slippery slopers," where they tend to try to not yield a single inch in the face of opposition. But that makes their positions quite brittle.