Give up.
The direct marketing industry will be saddled with the term “junk mail” until either mail, or DM itself, no longer exists. If someday the standard package with lift letter, buckslip and reply card is found to be a panacea for the world’s immunological ills, the headline will still be “Junk Mail Cures Spattergroit, Other Diseases”.
The primary reason for this lies squarely on the blocky noggins of newspaper headline writers. The space usually allocated for headlines is often the size of a business reply card’s ZIP +4 line. It’s a lot easier to fit “Junk Mail” than “Terrestrial Mailings That May Not Reflect An Established Business Relationship Between The Marketer And The Target” into such an area, especially since headlines often have a verb or two riding along in the rumble seat.
An article that ran in the Nov. 2 New York Times business section provides a perfect example of how deeply the phrase has taken root. The piece wasn’t a breathy, consumer-focused treatise on the horrors of compiled data, nor was it the tale of a deluded pensioner who boarded a plane to Publishers Clearing House’s Port Washington, NY, headquarters eager to claim the prize he May Have Already Won.
Instead, the Times article tells the general advertising public something direct marketers have known for a while; namely, that after the hype of new media, traditional channels continue to be useful for grabbing prospects’ attention. And it quotes advertising agencies, a representative from the Direct Marketing Association, and
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