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I’m delighted that the DMA has finally decided to take digital seriously, with its ‘revamped’ awards for 2008.

A little bit late to the party, perhaps, but better late than never.

A couple of years ago I wrote an article for the agency blog about how DM was failing miserably to embrace digital.

I thought then – and I still do – that digital belongs to us. After all, we already understand the idea of bringing brands to life; the importance of involvement and engagement; the secret of getting people to do something. We know all about targeting and measurement and testing.

Combine that with the expertise of online practitioners - interaction designers, information architects, developers – and I think you’ve got something special in the making. And something that sits right in the middle of our domain.

So why have we been so reluctant to grab the opportunity? (more…)

Do you tell everyone outside our industry that you work in advertising? It’s just a bit easier than explaining that you work in direct marketing, isn’t it? And of course it means you don’t have to suffer the ignominy of everyone thinking you do “junk mail”.

Right now, it seems more socially acceptable to be an England footballer than a direct marketer. Junk mail is right at the top of everyone’s hate list. A couple of years ago BBC’s Watchdog programme ran a feature on the things that annoy us most (or more accurately the things that most annoy the people who can be bothered to vote in a BBC Watchdog poll). Anyway, top of the list - worse than insurance companies who wriggle out of paying up – was junk mail.

Now if you’ve ever had to deal with an insurance company who just won’t pay up for some spurious reason (and I have), you’ll know it takes hours and days of phone calls and letter writing and weeks and months of frustration and stress. That strikes me as ever so slightly more annoying than getting some unsolicited direct mail through your letterbox. Still, the public have spoken. And they hate junk mail.

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