And the award for the most sloppy, dishonest reporting on a marketing-related development for the month of July goes to the British consumer press, with special honors reserved for the UK’s Sky News.
A slew of stories appeared in the British press recently telling readers that recommendations by the country’s privacy czar would result in a crackdown on direct mail. Sky News went further, saying the recommendations would help fight spam.
Trouble was, they were all blatantly wrong.
You know the drill: Government official scores political points by recommending slapping law-abiding direct marketing firms around; idiot consumer press laps it up without a clue as to how marketing actually works.
In a report released earlier this month, the UK’s Information Minister, Richard Thomas, and the director of the Wellcome Trust, Dr. Mark Walport, recommended making it easier for British citizens to keep track of which companies keep personal information about them. The report also recommended launching an inquiry into companies that collect and sell personal information.
Moreover, the report recommended banning the sale of the names and addresses on UK electoral records to marketing firms. Currently, the sale of UK electoral records is legal for getting names and addresses of people who haven’t opted out of the process.
Marketing firms use the UK’s electoral rolls to get accurate household information to, among other things, clean their lists.
Certainly, there is a debate to be had over whether public information gathered for elections should be sold for commercial purposes. But that debate is nowhere to be found in Sky News’ July 11 piece headlined: “Time to Get Tough on Spammers.”
“It’s one of the most irritating practices of our time,” began Sky News’ misleading marketing hack job. “You arrive at work and your inbox if full of spam e-mails, you get home and your floor is covered with junk mail and then just as you are relaxing with your evening meal the phone goes and it is a cold caller trying to sell you double glazing, a new patio or something or other.
“Well now an official report recommends clamping down on the sources of spam e-mails, junk mail and cold callers.”
How Thomas’s and Walport’s recommendations would curb spam was never addressed—probably because the recommendations won’t do anything to put the slightest dent in spam. They will only affect law-abiding marketers.
And while Sky News was the worst offender in mangling the coverage of Thomas’s and Walport’s recommendations and their potential effects, it wasn’t the only offender.
The UK Express published a story headlined: “Junk mail: Could this be the end?” Manchester Online ran the headline: “Stamping down on junk mail.”
And the Telegraph published the whopper headline: “End of cold calling and junk mail signaled by Information Commissioner.”
“Millions of households could see a big fall in the amount of junk mail and cold calls they receive after the government’s information watchdog said councils should be banned from selling personal details to companies,” began the Telegraph’s piece.
What? Do they think marketers get their names only from government databases? One could argue that barring marketing firms from gaining access to the UK’s electoral databases would make it harder to keep their lists clean of families who have moved and, therefore, result in more junk mail.
And, of course, nowhere in any of the reports was there even the slightest mention of the contribution direct marketing makes to the British economy.
Going for a hot angle is one thing. Misleading readers is another. The only question is: Was the misleading coverage of the UK privacy czar’s recommendations a result of intellectual laziness—as is often the case when consumer reporters write about marketing—or was it deliberate deception in an effort to pique readers’ curiosity?
Neither option is reassuring.
