Why does the media use DM as a scapegoat?
And what can we do to improve our image?
The Direct Marketing Association’s Connie LaMotta was once asked to appear on “Donahue” as one of three experts who would represent the industry on a show about direct marketing. When she arrived, she discovered she was the only DM representative – and there were seven people on the other side.
After a lengthy introduction where she was identified as the defender of those awful people who get your name and stuff your mailbox with all kinds of junk you don’t need, Phil Donahue walked over to LaMotta and stuck his face right up to hers.
“You know what?” he said. “We hate you.”
Not all of direct marketing’s brushes with the mainstream media are that venomous, but for the most part, they’re far from valentines. Be it privacy, sweepstakes, spam, telemarketing calls at dinner time or plain old direct mail, DM often strikes a sour note with the press. DIRECT recently spoke with a number of DM pros who’ve represented the industry in the press for the scoop on the state of DM’s media image.
The dilemma of a bad image isn’t limited to the United States, according to Colin Lloyd, chief executive of the United Kingdom’s DMA. “Traditionally, the consumer press only has two words in its head: junk mail.”
Lloyd says he spends a lot of time talking to journalists, trying to educate them on direct marketing. But there is continual turnover in journalism and so there are always new writers on the beat, with old prejudices.
Thanks to an increased public awareness of direct marketing, attributable in a big way to the Internet, the media at large is much more DM savvy – and sympathetic. But it’s still an uphill battle, one many companies don’t seem prepared to fight.
LaMotta, who recently left her post as the DMA’s senior vice president of public affairs to start her own firm, LaMotta Strategic Communications, says: “The problem is that there’s so many things the advocates have been successful at defining as privacy. We haven’t been effective in leading the debate – the industry has been reactive.”
Most companies don’t do a good job representing themselves, she says, because they don’t realize that speaking to the media is a specific skill.
“It’s like playing tennis,” LaMotta notes. “You need to set up the shot so the ball comes back to you. How you answer sets the reporter up for their next question,” a question that can help you get your point across, or help dig you deeper into a hole.
“From an issues standpoint, the industry has been hammered,” concurs Lisa C. Hahn, president of Caugherty Hahn Communications Inc. in Glen Rock, NJ, whose client roster has included Foster & Gallagher, Abacus, the Improvements catalog and AGA Catalog Marketing & Design. “We haven’t been able to win over the hearts and minds of the public. It’s a frustration.”
Hahn says that one mistake many companies make is not knowing how to “process and manage” their dealings with the media. “Along with advertising, marketing and customer service,” she says, “PR should be strategic and in touch with other fronts, so a cohesive message is sent out to the media.”
And it is important that you send out that message.
Speak Up
“I would never instruct anyone to say `no comment,’ because no comment equals “we’re guilty” in the eyes of many people,” says Hahn. “There’s always something you can say that has the same intent but gives them a comment. If you don’t give a comment, someone else will.”
Like LaMotta and Hahn, Bob Cargill – president of the New England Direct Marketing Association and a Sudbury, MA-based copywriter/creative director/DM strategist – feels the industry should get more proactive when it comes to dealing with the press.
“I know there is a lot of good, positive news our industry generates, but unfortunately the mainstream media is partial to a sensational, if not negative, perspective,” he says. “Maybe, to offset any existing stereotypes, we could do a better job educating a misinformed public as to what it is we really do.”
Both Cargill and Rosalie Harris of Chicago’s Creative Solutions, who has done PR for the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing since 1983, agree that while they have a healthy respect for church and state, they cringe when they see a newspaper using direct mail to boost circulation and then slamming DM in its editorial pages.
“This is unfair and often hypocritical,” says Cargill, “as many of these outlets are users themselves of the very DM practices they are calling into question.”
While newspapers may not always “get” DM, Harris says she thinks consumers do have a better understanding of concepts such as how they get on mailing lists, for example. And as for marketers, she thinks they’ve finally realized that image is not just a question of labels. DMers no longer think its simply a matter of eradicating the term “junk mail” and everything will be all better.
But direct marketers and vendors often are their own worst enemies when it comes to public image. As an example, Harris points to a commercial teleservices provider Ameritech ran for its privacy products that used the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” The refrain? “Bye, bye, Mr. Telemarketing Guy.”
John Gustavson, president and CEO of the Canadian Marketing Association, notes that the CMA dropped the word `direct’ from its name to help sharpen not only the press’ perception but the government’s as well, because it’s easier to get taken seriously when lobbying if it’s clear the group is more than just the “direct mail association.”
In the Canadian press, Gustavson has seen a promising reduction in the use of the dreaded term “junk mail,” as well as an increased awareness that good direct response advertising is highly targeted.
As far as the attitude of the press, he says it’s more curious than combative: “They want to know what this is all about and why it’s taken off,” Gustavson says, adding that reporters often are surprised to learn the economic impact of direct marketing.
The type of reporter calling has a lot to do with their attitude toward DM, says LaMotta. Lifestyle editors love catalogs and doing trend stories on new products and cool Web sites. Consumer advocate columns are usually balanced, and while they do focus on things like fraud, they give the DMA a chance to shine by promoting ways the association can assist consumers in need.
In some ways, the high technology that has spurred so much recent DM growth has also triggered a resurgence in some of the topics DM doesn’t always shine on in the media, such as privacy and taxation, claims Harris.
“The Chicago Sun-Times had a cover story on the Internet tax that states would like to impose, and it reminded me of the direct mail use tax battle,” she says.
Lloyd indicates that there’s been some change in U.K. consumer and media attitudes over the last six months, thanks largely to the press coverage of the European Union’s telemarketing directive requiring all companies that do outbound telemarketing to customers and prospects to use the Telephone Preference Service. “The publicity has been intense,” he says, adding that all the press has led to the file increasing in size from about 300,000 names six months ago to over 1 million now.
Personal Experience
Direct marketing is something that everyone – including reporters – has experience with in their daily lives. That may be part of the problem, says LaMotta, because reporters often begin a story with an opinion they want to bear out because of a personal experience, such as having received telemarketing calls at dinner or being part of a catalog price test where they didn’t receive the best offer.
During the DMA’s annual conference in San Francisco last fall, a local television station began running a promo during its 11 o’clock news urging viewers to stay tuned and hear about how “the junk mailers had come to town.” Throughout the broadcast the promos got more and more sensational. Finally, at the tail end of the news, the story ran. LaMotta led the reporter around the exhibit hall floor, explaining the mail and telephone preference services and highlighting ways the industry strives to contact consumers in targeted, effective ways.
She did an admirable job putting the business’s best foot forward – to little avail. The camera panned over piles of catalogs as the reporter intoned that these horrible people were going to keep mailing and calling your home – and there was nothing you could do.
For all its spit and vinegar, the story actually turned out better than LaMotta had hoped. The reporter arrived at Moscone Center ready to do atotal smear on the industry. “I challenged him to the teeth,” she says, “and man aged to get my 2 cents in.”
Hahn tells a similar tale from when she was the DMA’s director of public relations. She shepherded a “Good Morning America” crew around a conference for several days, answering their questions on everything from customer service to self-regulation. They filmed loads of footage – but came away with no story. The producer, who started the assignment expecting a juicy, controversial story, was won over to the benefits of DM. “He was sold,” says Hahn. “He said, `I don’t see anything wrong with this industry.'”
Lloyd notes that he too has done numerous television appearances, and like LaMotta, prefers participating in live broadcasts, because you don’t have to worry about how your words will be edited.
“We try to position ourselves on the side of the consumer,” he says of the association’s TV stance. “We want to be helpful rather than defend what is sometimes indefensible.”
What Can Be Done?
Across the pond, the U.K. DMA is about to launch a massive consumer educational advertising and PR campaign it hopes will serve to educate the media as well. And Cargill says he’s considered having a contest asking NEDMA members to create such an effort for the New England area.
Another solution may be to look good in the eyes of the press by doing good, says Harris, pointing to CADM’s pro bono “Direct From the Heart” program, where DMers lend their time and talents to a nonprofit, as an example.
But the most important thing is to let yourself be heard. Hahn recommends building a rapport with the media, especially locally. If a company is known as a reputable business, she reasons, the press will be more likely to call for a comment before running a negative story.
Canadian marketers have gotten better doing just that, claims Gustavson. “When I first came [to the CMA] there was such a bunker mentality,” he says. “Nobody wanted to talk to the media because they thought, `They hate us.'” The problem, he says, was that marketers were unwilling to meet with the press and present themselves and their viewpoints. That’s the wrong tack to take, he believes, because “it’s much harder to hate someone you know.”
But though Lloyd thinks “the tide has turned in our favor,” the industry can’t rest on its laurels, on either side of the Atlantic.
“Nobody said it would be easy. That’s what they pay me for,” he says with a laugh. “If it was easy, they wouldn’t need me.”
Network
