WITHIN 48 HOURS after the notice of my father’s death appeared in The New York Times, my mother received direct mail solicitations offering estate appraisal services. “Too quick,” she said as she tossed the letters into the wastepaper basket.
For better or for worse, my mother is worldly enough to recognize that one person’s grief may be another person’s marketing opportunity. She’s not an avid reader of DIRECT for nothing. But she does feel common sense, if not common decency, suggests waiting a week until the family is ready to deal with such legal matters.
In other words, what those DMers said to my family is that their need to make a buck is more important than our need to grieve.
While the immediate issue here is timing, the larger issue is privacy. Not of medical or financial records, but of a time or space when or where one is not marketed to. Some marketers, it seems, feel there is no time, place or event that can’t be used to pitch a product or service to a prospect.
This problem will not be solved by self-regulation, or even legislation. A mail preference service such as the Direct Marketing Association’s would not have filtered out those pitch letters. A careful analysis of both the positive and negative implications of marketing at a time like this might have. Targeting is no substitute for taste.
Otherwise, the quick to market may indeed find their business dead on arrival.-JB
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