In defence of DM
Lester Wunderman who identified, defined and named Direct Marketing.
Direct is having a tough time of it at the moment.
In a world of increasing consumer antipathy towards orthodox communications channels (you’ll remember the TGI chart showing the decline in people thinking the ads are as good as the programmes) DM – both mail and its bastard offspring telemarketing – set new standards in irritation and intrusiveness. And you better believe that the in cards are marked by the self-regulation bodies if not the legislators.
And that’s before you get onto the thorny issue of DM’s environmental footprint. Both the consumption of materials and energy to create it in the first place and the residue it leaves in the home – the disposal of which falls to individuals and their council tax.
In all this ethical mess I have recently found some reasons to be cheerful and to recognise the specific qualities that DM contributes to the process of bringing brand ideas to life.
I started out in Direct Marketing – I was Simon Hall’s first graduate trainee. Three years later I escaped the word of guestimating the GSM of paper stock for the heady world of planning and the bright lights of advertising.
I had finally figured out that it was somebody’s job to come up with the strategy, not just implement it below the line, and those people tended to live in ad agencies – this was in the early ‘90s dear reader.
And that was that.
Then recently, being a man of some leisure, I was leafing through the Campaign Direct Awards supplement and I got really rather excited – it was jam packed full of really good creative work.
That’s the thing about direct, it is so, well, direct that you never get to find out about the good stuff unlike the way a great brand film gets youtubed to within an inch of its life. Hell you can’t even link to the campaigns.
And the thing is that where an advertising awards supplement is full of ads a DM awards supplement is full of stuff – things that they have created to bring brand ideas to life rather than ads that tell you things.
So I like the chemical tanker that Ogilvy made to look like a cigarette complete with the poison warnings on the back. I like the brand of concealer that Craik Jones created to raise awareness of domestic abuse. I like the ‘baby somewhere on board’ window sticker that Archibald Ingall Stretton sent to launch the first Skoda MPV. I like the Fuzzy Felt set that Craik Jones gave out on behalf of First Direct. And I like the ‘slobber cloth’ that Joshua mailed Pedigree owners as part of the ‘it’s a dog thing campaign’. All stuff that helps people get the brand idea.
Sure an ad for the Skoda MPV could have photographed the rear window of the vehicle sporting a yellow diamond shaped ‘baby somewhere on board’ sticker, but how much better to actually give the real deal to someone complete with the little plastic sucker.
In a way DM is a half way house between the sterile reach of 2D advertising and the high levels of engagement against irrelevantly small groups of people you get with experiential marketing. And by the way it also makes digital look rather flat too.
OK so the business still obsesses about mock personalisation and hand written signatures, the vast majority is irrelevant, obnoxious and in my home, and the whole endeavour is an environmental disaster area.
But as a way to bring brand ideas to life in three dimensions allied to a distribution system that allow you to get it into a significant number of peoples hands it takes some beating.
Are you sure it needs defending? According to this report it is so big and growing so fast its actually holding up the US economy: “Overall US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2006 will benefit from strong growth generated by direct marketing, and DM advertising across all economic sectors is expected to contribute more than $1.37 trillion of incremental final demand nationwide, accounting for 10.3 percent of total US GDP” I bet that new bloke at the IPA would love to be able to say the same of advertising :)
Of course that 10% of the US eceonomy thing is probably total tosh, except i do believe the bit that says it is growing year on year. I thik you need to distinguish between junk mail on printed paper, and direct (ie targeted) offers through many channels run by those big CRM systems you dont like either.
Not saying I love DM, just not sure its quite on its last legs.
sorry it didnt let me html tag the reference/source it’s
http://www.the-dma.org/cgi/dispannouncements?article=601++++++
awesome :)) thanks
http://www.advertolog.com/ – new site with ad prints and tv spots
DM is a great channel when well executed and planned. It’s a bit like receiving a well thought out gift, sent by a friend….
You talk about it for the rest of the day.
John,
I was reading some of the stuff that Lester has said in the past and I think the great schism in DM is not between cold list junk and CRM but between DM that aims to build brand equity and DM that aims to build customer equity.
Loved this post.
People are always so snobby about DM and wrongly.
I spent 3 years out in the States working for OgilvyOne New York and so many of the principles of direct marketing are spot on and have served me well in the following years. The idea of developing creative work that genuinely taps into specific mindsets and lifestage, that allows for deeper engagement and interactivity can’t be wrong. The OgilvyOne mantra of “Test, Learn, Refine” is one that I use on projects now.
As a consumer i find that DM works just like other channels, but in a much more polarising way.
I hate hate hate rubbish credit card letters etc, and poor pieces of brand communication.
However, I have recieved DM from Honda and Saab (in particular) that I have kept and shown to others because it impressed me so much.
(The Saab one was a brilliant little German translation book with phrases to use at your German car dealer (Ie: VW) such as: “Its nice, but I prefer the Sweedish car”)
In my neck of the woods we work with mostly premium brands. And DM is something of a must to get our point across.
The whole thing about DM is that it needs to be crafted with more care than some of the more mass channels. Just be direct about it, and don’t beat around the bush. And it needs to be entertaining in every shape or form. Because the last thing you need is junk mail.
I think every channel needs a lot of care, that should be integral to any work. However I think you are absolutely right about the need to entertaining .
Richard – love the thought that there is a schism ‘between DM that aims to build brand equity and DM that aims to build customer equity’. Doesn’t this apply to TV advertising too – or may be all advertising? Couldn’t we use Stephen King’s thought that the purpose of advertising was to create saleability rather than sales and if that is the case couldn’t TV be the new ‘DM’ (press red etc) and direct mail be used to build brand equity, awareness and Return on Involvement leading to an increase in customer equity?
What a delicious moment of shadenfreude that would be for the industry as a whole n’est pas?
I agree that DM has a well deserved place within the advertising arena as a result of some fantastic creative work. However, i have very rarely come across such work through my own letter box. Because the majority of DM is made of credit card, insurance, pension…ads, i tend like the majority of people to not even take a glimpse of what i’m about to place in the trashcan ‘knowing’ full well that it is not of interest to me and that my priority is getting through my bills first!
I think it’s a tough channel to work in and congratulations for the ones who do get through to their targeted consumers.
Love the idea that DM – at best – sits between (too) mass advertising and (too) small-scale experiential.
I feel a diagram coming on…
Stand back everyone, quick nurse ‘the screens’, Jon has a chart coming on…