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Staff Writer, Steven Elliott It may be an apocryphal story, but it's said Lester Wunderman, the self-styled father of direct marketing, laments the fact that he chose the term 'direct marketing' over 'personal advertising'. Poor Lester may not have to despair for much longer. As marketing becomes more digitally-driven, it strikes me that the distinction between advertising and direct marketing is increasingly blurred. Today's most celebrated advertising campaigns invite interaction from their audience. Engagement is the new measure of success. Few channels don't now offer the ability for a customer to respond in some way. From the red button on your digital TV to Bluetooth-enabled posters. We may not always be selling directly off the (web)page, but levels of response are now being used to measure the effectiveness of brand advertising. Of course direct marketing hasn't stood still. The combination of variable digital print, personalisation and advances in data mining and analytics is making campaigns more relevant and targeted than ever before. What's really changed in the past year is the application of similar analytics and mass personalisation to online advertising. Publishers like Google are now capturing user data every bit as revealing as the shopping habits monitored to such effect by the likes of Tesco. Behaviourally targeted television advertising won't be far behind. In this converged marketing landscape the separation of advertising and direct marketing disciplines is nonsensical. And in my view it's going to be far easier for brand-savvy direct agencies to evolve than it is for advertising agencies to acquire the left-brained marketing skills needed to thrive in this new world. |
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Banner blog link of the month Stern, clean tech and the role for marketing. The conclusions of the Stern Report are frightening by anyone's standards:
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