DM’s summer of discontent

Direct Marketing (DM) has had a good kicking in the press this year. There are those in the DM industry who feel that the solution lies in “a spin doctor supremo” and “an ad campaign extolling the virtues of DM” Marketing Direct Magazine October 2006. The problems within DM go far, far deeper and while PR might give an improved veneer, it will do little to influence the underlying substance.

The reasons DM is where it is in the public’s perception lie partly with the national psyche (partly the dislike newspaper editors have for their advertising paymasters) but also go to the very heart and origins of the business. Let me try and suggest why:

 

1) The ‘chuck it at the wall and see how much sticks’ mentality is still alive and well in DM in the 21st Century. This is driven in part by…

2) The price per thousand tendency where campaign strategy and targeting take a poor second and third place to output costs.

3) List owners and brokers, some who would consider themselves among the most ethical in the business, who care not for the quality of their data but for the quantity of their profits.

 

These three, like the PR disaster of the summer, are but the symptoms of a more profound malaise. This sickness at the heart of the business can be traced back through three or four generations of practitioners, probably to the start of the business in the UK.

 

1) DM is an industry with no professional structure or widely accepted career path. Non existent barriers to entry and an ill defined career structure reduce the perceived value added of the practitioners to the long term detriment of the industry.

2) This is in part a result of the organisational dichotomy lying at the heart of the industry. On the one hand there is a toothless trade body whose agendas are highjacked by its supplier driven vested interests. On the other a ‘for profit’ training organisation that is widely seen as self-serving, not industry serving.

 

As long as the industry continues to believe that all that is needed is one more PR initiative, it is destined to be held up to ridicule from outside. As long as thought leaders publicly condemn others sectors as being ‘inherently dodgy’ without rationally looking at DM’s professionalism and structure, DM will only get the coverage it deserves.