DMA in Defensive Mode at The Grosvenor House last night

Last night The Grosvenor House had the rare distinction of hosting not one but two DMA events. The first in The Great Ballroom for the Direct Marketing Association Awards and the other in a heavily fortified bunker of a function room, for the Defence Manufacturers' Association Ball.

One event was focused on impact, campaign planning, logistics, targeting and delivery, the other was focused on, well, much the same really...which got us all thinking (including our compere, Dara O'Brien). With the Direct Marketing Association expanding its categories to 32 this year, we sat there wondering what the Defence Manufacturer Association Awards would look like.

Best use of sea-launched guided missile, best firearm anti-jamming mechanism, best tracer bullet, best thermo nuclear bomb. Interesting, isn't it, how we in marketing deploy the language of war to describe what we do. Perhaps the two industries aren't so different after all. Maybe next year, we could all join up and share our learnings.

Postgate Postscript

The marketing community says a fond farewell to Oliver Postgate, creator of Ivor the Engine, The Clangers, Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog, whose death was announced today. I loved Ivor The Engine. It was gentle, enchanting, escapist stuff - and pandered to the truism that every little boy born in the late 50's and early 60's wanted to be an engine driver when they grew up.

At a time where there was more emphasis on adult role models, the engine driver took me along on an incredible journey every week. I also loved the fact that The Clangers could say so much in their whooping and swooping musical utterances without saying anything. And the Soup Dragon was pure genius. Postgate was influential in so many ways. Even his name sounds like one of his character creations - he became a brand in his own right even before animation brands became big business. Wherever the credits featured the name Oliver Postgate, you felt as a kid somehow comforted.

Postgate rose to prominence in the days of two channels, when his animations headed the prized teatime line-up that was children's hour. And he worked out of a shed in his garden. Now that the marketing community has discovered the power of classic characters to appeal to the inner child (Paddington Bear for Marmite, Wallace and Gromit for Kingsmill, Mr Men for Persil) and we are using these creations to mine a nostalgic seam among an older audience, my guess is that brands will re-discover his work. And, in so doing, my hope is that this will have a halo effect - allowing younger audiences to pick up on the genius of Oliver Postgate.

Scientific proof that laughter is more potent than shock in viral marketing

I've been wondering why I've had not one comment on my recent blog-post about direct marketing surviving the recession. And then the penny dropped. Yesterday, I heard about how scientists have revealed that fear is quite literally physically contagious (presumably, these scientists are the ones who haven't been busy discovering the human genome, genetically re-mastering crops, refining the blueprint for coal-fired nuclear power, cloning human tissue or patenting anti-cancer drugs - and therefore have time to do this sort of inconsequential study). Apparently, we don't just smell fear in others. It's passed on through pheromones secreted by the human sweat glands (which is why panic and terror spread so quickly). Indeed, the armed services are now looking at human sweat as a counter-insurgency weapon. Hard on the heels of this comes the blinding revelation that happiness is entirely a social phenomenon. Another set of researchers from The University of the Common Cold, or some such American- mid-west -quasi-scientific-para-academic -institution- foundation, have deduced the following from a study of 5,000 people over a number of years. That if you surround yourself with happy people, you too will be happy. And if those people know other happy people, you will be ecstatic. And if those people know other happy people who know other happy people, then you'll be like a pig in do-do. It goes to about four degrees of separation before the effect starts to wear out. Which is interesting, if unsurprising. Because, with the digital age, seven degrees of human separation have now been reduced to just 4.5. So you could say viral marketing is one of the most powerful tools human civilization has at its disposal in spreading global happiness. And why all of us involved in viral marketing should take that responsibility very seriously indeed. I won't even go into the debate about what defines happiness (it was a bacon roll for me this morning), but suffice to say it's now scientifically proven - laughter and joy are infectious. And, unlike fear, you don't physically have to be in the company of happy people to be infected. Just surround yourself with them, virtually or otherwise and it will happen osmotically. Which accounts for the reason why, with viral, funny is more powerful than shocking. And may account for the lack of interest in my blog-post raising the spectre of recession. After all, despite the term 'viral', digital experts have as yet failed to find a way to transmit fear pheromones and sweat droplets down our broadband wires. And virtual fear and shock are poor substitutes for that.