What impact–if any–Monday night’s mass resignation by the 20-member European Commission will have on direct marketing depends entirely on whom you ask.
“It was a lame-duck commission and now it’s just a dead commission. It’s a disaster,” said Alastair Tempest, director general for the Federation of European Direct Marketing.
Tempest noted that the week’s events could play in favor of Europe moving away from becoming a single economic market, which would surely hurt cross-border trading for direct marketers.
Colin Lloyd, chief executive of the U.K. Direct Marketing Association, was less concerned. “It will have no effect” on direct marketing,” he said. “The European Commission moves in rarified circles. The equivalent would be [the U.S.] House of Representatives going en masse.”
“Many people see it as stopping the gravy train,” said Jo Lloyd, principal of Gap Communications, a Newmilns, England-based consultancy, alluding to reports of fraud that spurred the resignations. “But it’s not just at the top, it runs to the lower levels and the middlemen.”
Kelly H. Gilroy, chief marketing and sales officer of Naperville, IL-based Solar Communications, which is exhibiting at the DM Fair at Wembly, was unsure of the ultimate impact on direct marketing, but noted it could be a setback given that the Euro is still in its infancy.
“We just got through with the scandal in the U.S. and now we come here to this,” she said.
Network
