It’s time for DM to go on the creative charm offensive [02.02.07]
It took a populist BBC consumer programme to make us admit it, but at last the direct marketing industry has faced up to the fact that most people don’t like what we do.
In the fall out that followed this bombshell, much comment focused on the semantics surrounding ‘junk mail’. The stock retort that many of us reserve for use at dinner parties after revealing what we do for a living (“it’s not junk if it’s well targeted”) resounded loudly.
Unfortunately, that’s a naive and blinkered statement. Leaving aside the handful of award-winners that we all fawn over, one look through your typical weekly doormats- worth of mailings will leave you anything but engaged, feeling warm and ready to respond.
Whilst creativity in some sectors has improved greatly, in others we’re still in the era of Johnson boxes and rambling letters with two PSes that shout and scream instead of gently cajole. Is it any wonder the masses think what we do is crap?
Improving targeting is without doubt something we need to be concerned with. But equally, we need to make sure that the stuff that gets sent doesn’t irritate the ninety-odd percent of people who choose not to “act now” by its very crassness. Yes, these non-responders are important if you view things from an industry perspective.
It’s time to mount a charm offensive and make direct marketing more loveable. And at the heart of that is creativity.
It may seem like an impossible task, but other forms of commercial communication have managed it, TV advertising being the most notable example. It’s more intrusive and demanding of attention than direct marketing. Yet when done well, it prompts discussion amongst friends and with colleagues at work the next day. It influences popular culture and language (husband to wife who’s been experimenting with fake tan: “Looks like you’ve been Tangoed”). TV programmes are even made about TV advertising (Channel 4’s “100 Greatest TV ads”).
That’s not to say it’s all good. Far from it. It does illustrate, though, that the average member of the public is happy to be entertained and informed by advertising. Can’t we in DM do that just as well as our above-the-line counterparts?
Direct mail’s dynamic is obviously different from that of broadcast, but it has the capacity to be no less powerful. Sadly, the commitment to craft is often missing when
it comes to our creative. Hampered by the spectre of old “rules”, an obsession with cost-per-pack efficiencies, and a culture where getting something out quickly rather
than honing the execution is the order of the day, what’s in the envelope can end up being bland at best.
If we’re to change perceptions of our industry, championing creativity has to be a big part of the equation for everyone. Mediocrity has to be shunned, along with the chase to get customers in as cheaply and as fast as possible, whatever the long term cost. The real challenge will be comaccountability of direct marketing. .
It may be a few years yet before people can be heard down the pub quoting lines from a mail-pack they’ve received. But if we’re to make the transition from loathed to loved, the change must start now.
