Shock, horror...someone has been selling mobile contract data, allegedly owned by T Mobile, onto other network providers. Brokers, those despicable middle-men working in the dark shadows of the marketing world, are implicated in the scandal. Poor T Mobile customers have been 'cold-called' (a...
Lord Leverhulme famously said that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half”. In a downturn it is vital that none of the marketing pound is wasted and as planning director at Leeds-based direct response agency PCD, I can reveal how to be smarter with...
Digital digital digital – isn’t it wonderful?! With its power to engage, its speed, the huge choice and access it offers consumers and, not least, the vast opportunity it provides for marketers to get under the skin of prospects and customers like never before. Well, a resounding ‘yes’ to all of the...
Two recent news items have got me thinking this week. Firstly, the collapse of the infamous mobile telephone directory, using bought in data, and secondly the ASA rapping Virgin Media over the fingers for not using goneaway suppression. Both cases represent a certain naivety on the part of both organisations...
Michelle Obama is a home shopper. The Queen apparently is too, as well as being a catalogue owner selling souvenirs at various palaces and stately homes. But Henry VIII? He of the six wives, big girth and 16th century bloodthirstiness fame? Now we must add 'celebrity home shopper' to this list...
All industries evolve. Things change, develop, improve. Direct Marketing is no different to any other sector, and the major change of the last ten years has been the growth of information technology. Is this a good thing? For me, the jury is still out. The first mailshot I organised, circa 1985, involved...
Since the kerfuffle about the mobile telephone directory, list broking is in the news. In the Daily Mail, the term is used with obvious distaste, as if the lists of numbers supplied to the company launching the directory were somehow unclean. The tone suggests dodgy deals done in shady corners, with...
Good grief, when are we ever going to learn? Your starter for ten, why is the direct marketing industry hated by the consumer? Because we have allowed their data to be treated with disdain and disrespect, that's why. Spam, junk, confetti tactics, poor targeting...you name it, and someone calling...
I'm a big fan of Waitrose and a customer for nearly 30 years. I'm also a genuine admirer of Kitcatt Nohr, one of the best agencies in London. So there was a double sense of disappointment when I received the new Waitrose essentials mailing fanfared in Marketing Direct yesterday. To start with...
Today the London Business School reports marketers 'must focus on consumers looking for bargains in a new era of austerity'. For agencies, austerity is truly biting hard. Waves of redundancies have generated a miserable atmosphere, and inevitably damaged morale. And lots of very good people gone...
