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...
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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...
I’m supposed to be having a day off. Fat chance. You might have noticed a story put out by our cousins at the IAB that claims online advertising has now overtaken TV to become the ‘biggest single advertising medium in the UK’ (by spend). We find the IAB’s story odd because the internet is not a single...
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...
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...
On the Forrester blog for product management and product marketing, Tom Grant examines the recent trends in marketing and concludes with the following paragraph: The marketing acumen of yesterday...today! Product marketers today should not be congratulating themselves on how much smarter they are than...
