The Empire Strikes Back

Thomson have successfully sued a broker for data breaches, (or is that breeches?) being awarded £47k in an out of court settlement. Well done to them, not only for taking action but for catching the guilty party. There is so much data, old and new, good and bad, legal and illegal, swilling around out there, that proving it was your old rubbish wrongfully sold is extremely hard - even with seeded data.

Thomson are big enough to sue and damn the consequences, and clearly the unnamed list broker settled out of court to protect their reputation. Shame, these people need to be named. Producing marketable data costs serious money. Keeping it clean costs even more. To see that ripped off, and probably sold for peanuts, is extremely annoying. I know, I've been there.

The trouble is that it is so easy to steal. The broker concerned could have bought the data legitimately some time ago, and just resold that file over and over again. Also, so many people have Thomson data, it must be a nightmare keeping track of it, and the data licensing team at Thomson's has always been surprisingly small.

All suppliers should invest in a good seeding system to give them a chance to catch this sort of scam. The trouble is that just makes it even more expensive, cutting even further into margins when data is increasingly a commodity. Then, if they catch someone, everyone should sue, but that costs serious money and serious time, something that smaller businesses cannot always afford.

It could be that this was a genuine mistake on the part of the broker, but I seriously doubt it. Everyone is under pressure to make sales. Why go and pay for something again when the data is sitting there in an old file? No one will ever find out, will they? And from there on in it spirals out of control.

I wonder if the broker concerned is a DMA member?

Data Deja Vu

Ebay had to get involved sooner or later, didn't it? Buy an old server for £35 and get a few hundred thousand files of personal details thrown in. Perfect gift for Father's Day. The sheer incompetence makes the mind boggle. If you are a bank, or a credit card company, surely you make sure that all servers and PC's are wiped clean before disposal? If you entrust data and equipment to a third party, surely you make damned sure that they take proper precautions too?

Are there people insane?

Then, just when you thought the government couldn't get itself into anymore data related problems, they entrust 135000 criminal records to a memory stick and let it go wandering with yet another outside contractor. Encrption? Don't be silly. Procedures? This is government, remember. The only job I can think of where expenses are paid on trust. No receipts necessary.

The fact is they just don't seem to care. The government loses one laptop a day, somewhere, and the fact is they don't have a clue what is on them. Add to that a mobile phone or a pda every other day, and I bet old Golden Brown has to change his mobile number every week, to stop all the sniggering phone calls from the lucky recipients.

This is serious stuff for anyone in an industry that needs data. The consumer cannot have much trust left. It is not even a drip-drip of bad news, it is a Tsunami every few weeks. The ICO is looking into things again, but here is a prediction for you. The banks and the outside contractor in the servergate scandal will get heavy fines, and heads will roll. The government will not get fined, but maybe a civil servant somewhere will take early retirement on his index-linked pension.

Our government can't run a bath, let alone an ID card scheme. Whilst Golden is concentrating on the job, and making the right long-term decisions for everyone, his team are turning the machinery of government into a farce.

Still enough whingeing. There is a server about to sell on Ebay that looks quite promising...

David Davis Read My Blog

Or we have the same opinions about a government uber database of mobile, internet and email activity, accessible by parking meter gestapo and bin police. I heard him on the Today programme this week, and I must say that he has picked up my arguments rather well :)

However, in contemplating this database, the focus so far has been on the consumer. But we must remember that a lot of this activity is business-related. So are various government departments liable to have access to sensitive commercial information? When businesses are bidding for government tenders, might htis not be of concern?

The government (to use a broad term for all civil servants and councils) have a poor record in data security, and a consequent trust rating of about -2. Being able to snoop on all sorts of sensitive communications will raise suspicions.

As DD said on Today, everyone can understand the need to be able to monitor communications activity if there is reasonable suspicion ot terrorist activity or serious crime, as long as there is a black and white mechanism for getting approval to snoop. Bin infringements are not serious enough.

There is no real excuse to make this data available over a broad cross-section of the civil service and local government. MI5 yes, the Flying Squad, yes. Bin infringement Officer, third class, no.

Maybe we should look outside the box, let alone think outside it

All the fuss and fun about the DMA trimming its board showed how insular we all are. Our own little trade magazines build little things up into issues, and the same old faces appear in the columns, commenting on whatever the item is this week. All good PR of course. All a good laugh, most of the time. But no one outside our little industry cares.

To anyone not in the marketing industry, the DMA, IPA et al are faceless organisations with little point. One is in charge of junk mail and the other interrupts Corrie, or cuts down the number of minutes the football pundits can debate that offside decision at half time (See, advertising is sometimes a VERY good thing).

Many passionate people give time and money to such organisations, serving on committee's, working on papers and propositions. But I fear no one in these august organisations is looking out of the fishbowl. The last year or so has been a disaster for data and DM. The government have lost enough laptops with sensitive data on it to keep a decent sized comprehensive in IT equipment, the green argument is making 'junk' mail even more unpopular...oh the list is so endless I can't be bothered to type it.

It doesn't matter how big the board is. It just has to do something positive. That is too easy to say, of course, and much harder to do. But if we are an industry, let's talk it up. Let's remind people how many jobs we create, how much money we pay in taxes. Anything to make people stop and think that DM does have a place.

Ho hum, it's stopped raining. Must be nearly autumn...

Silly Season Promotes Navel Gazing

As August blossoms, or rather thunders in so far, and everything goes quiet, I feel it is time for a bit of a deep breath and a cold hard look at ourselves. Anyone working in the DM industry must feel a little bit embarrassed and concerned right now. Embarrassed because we are only slightly less unpopular than traffic wardens and estate aganets, and concerned because as we enter a recession marketing budgets are being slashed to pieces.

Is this fair?

No, not really. DM is not the worst environmental industry by far. You only have to do your weekly shop in the supermarket to prove that. And just about everyone in this country has bought something via DM. So why are we so hated? Well, the DMA, newly christened 'Hillbillies' have a part to play in that. The industry pays a considerable amount of money to fund a trade body and their public profile defending DM and looking at positives rather than negative makes Lembit Opik look like front page news.

DM is not sexy like advertising. It is a cold hard slog towards achieving ROI, not a glamorous whirl at the video shoot, or the recording studio. But it works. We have to get better at explaining why. Michael Grade has just shown that the mass advertising channels are having a hard time, so this is the perfect moment for the DMA or someone to start talking about value for money spent in the least cool channel.

I also just read that Precision Marketing is going monthly. Not great news. It shows that they are not getting the advertising and any industry where the trade press is contracting is under pressure.

When we all emerge from the summer, it is going to look tough out there. Expect more consolidation...and not only of the DMA board. There are too many data suppliers, too many brokers, too many list managers, too many lists. Data is used and abused, and in a recession that will only get worse.

IDMF Demise No Surprise

The International Direct Marketing Fair is no more. Well, new owner UBM is rolling it into about 3 other shows this year, but it is as good as dead. Few tears will be shed. It has been dead for years. Our 'industry' rather enjoys a good party, and Read Exhibitions fed off this with an exhibition, dinners, awrds...the usual old stuff, but the reason for the exhibition became murkier and less appealing by the year.

It was the same old faces, the same old major stand holders, who felt they had to be seen to be there. The sponsored bar, the horde of recruitment consultants filling the aisles, the gimmicks. It could not last.

Exhibitions are at their best when a vibrant industry is coming up with new ideas, new products, new initiatives which all add up to being worth a day out for the visitor. Arranged properly by the organisers, with seminars and space to meet and network, it can be an annual opportunity to meet existing customers or prospects, saving on a lot of expensive travelling for both sides by metting on neutral ground, around an event all want to attend, or even need to attend. This hasn't been true of the IDMF fair for a number of years.

IDMF week was about the parties and the dinners, about meeting cronies at the bar. New business opportunities at the exhibition itself were more or less non-existant, because there was no one new there. There was nothing new to see. No new ideas. It only survived so long because the big names felt they had to be there.

In a way it is a shame. The industry still supports a number of magazines and events, but maybe the exhibition has had its day. Personally, I will not miss Earls Court 2. I wonder if the Listlab party will survive?