DMA's Chris Combemale Reflects on 47 Years of Marketing Disruption
Outgoing DMA leader Chris Combemale has witnessed 47 years of marketing change, from email's arrival to the AI era, yet says the industry's fundamentals remain unchanged.
Updated
The brief
- Chris Combemale has spent 47 years in marketing across advertising, direct marketing and martech
- He has worked at the DMA for nearly 20 years and is now outgoing leader
- Combemale argues technology has improved but marketing fundamentals remain the same
Few marketers can claim to have watched nearly half a century of the industry evolve from the inside. Chris Combemale is one of them.
Over 47 years, Combemale has worked across advertising, direct marketing and martech. He has spent nearly 20 of those years at the DMA, the UK trade body for data and marketing, where he now serves as outgoing leader.
His career has tracked a period of relentless technological change. When he started, email did not exist as a marketing channel. Today, artificial intelligence sits at the centre of industry debate.
The industry has transformed again and again during his tenure, according to Combemale. But his central observation cuts against the noise: while technology has improved dramatically, the fundamentals of marketing remain the same.
For a generation of marketers now grappling with generative AI, that perspective offers context. Tools change. Channels multiply. The core discipline of understanding customers and communicating value endures.
Combemale's five-decade vantage point spans the shift from mass advertising to data-driven direct marketing, through the martech boom, and into the current AI era.
Based on Marketing Week
Filed under dma, chris-combemale, martech, ai, marketing
Priya Raman
Show full bio
Correspondent covering industry trends and analytics at Marketing Herald.