Re: Loose Cannon: No Shortcomings in Industry Shorthand, DIRECT Newsline, Oct. 14, 2002
Certainly those you mention are very useful phrases, and if for no other reason than they cause us to stop and think about the message that we’re receiving. There is a distinct difference between each of them, and that difference needs to be thought about instead of just going into the memory bank un-noticed, along with all of the other “almost-speak” or “tech-speak” that has become so pervasive in our times.
Perhaps you’ll take this one on. Because I’m well past the age of 22, I have difficulty with names of companies or services that do not, in my mind at least, tell me anything about what they are or what they do. What is a “Verizon” for example? At least Bell stood for a telephone ring at one time, as did American Telephone and Telegraph, shortened to AT&T. I have learned the answers, but I find it difficult to retain the name of a company that doesn’t convey anything to my somewhat overloaded memory bank. Is it just me, or it a deliberate desire that marketing people have to speak only to people under the age of reason?
Linda Huntoon
Direct Media, Inc.
Greenwich, CT
I agree whole-heartedly on use of the term “data-based marketing” — it’s infinitely more descriptive of what many of us do, than is the term “database marketing”. Database marketing implies not only hardware and software as you noted, but also some kind of mass communication to a database, whereas data-based marketing ( I believe) implies using data to determine what sort of marketing one should implement.
As for “distance marketing” it makes sense but I doubt it will catch on, perhaps because it implies something impersonal. Many have used the term “remote purchasing or remote shopping” to describe what consumers who buy via phone, mail or Web are doing and these haven’t really caught on either. As with the negatives of impersonal marketing, no one wants to think of their customers as “remote”.
Your final term of hand-raisers seems like a no brainer — I’ve used it and heard it used for years. I’m not sure what the editors are objecting to.
Shari Altman, president
Altman Dedicated Direct
Rural Hall, NC
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