A funny thing happened at the Direct Marketing Association's Fast Forward 2007 conference this week. One of my co-presenters asked the audience members -- some of the most senior people in the direct mail business -- to raise their hands if they consider themselves to be in the clutter business. Not a single hand went up.
He then asked the same audience to raise their hands if they have a DVR and use that DVR to skip past television commercials. Nearly everyone raised their hands.
So how can a roomful of seasoned business executives recognize the problem of ad clutter and take action to minimize the clutter in their own lives, yet not see that, as marketing professionals, they are guilty of contributing to the problem?
Lack of perspective? Or maybe a human tendency to think that we, ourselves, aren't part of the problem? I suppose the world looks different when you see it through the eyes of the consumer than when you see it through the eyes of the creator. It's quite possible that we can't see the forest for the trees.
It's easy to cast stones at the direct mail industry -- even with the most sophisticated demographic, psychographic, lifestyle and behavioral targeting, I still get more irrelevant mail than relevant mail -- but this whole exchange leaves me questioning whether I'm much different from my direct marketing counterparts.
In my heart, I believe that the permission-based, conversation-oriented and consumer-driven marketing approaches that I evangelize represent a quantum leap forward relative to traditional interruption marketing tactics. I'm helping brands connect with people on their own terms, in ways that aren't simply more relevant but actually deliver value to the very people with whom they hope to forge and maintain relationships.
But at the end of the day, as long as marketers are pumping money into television and radio spots, print ads, online banners, homepage takeovers and (yes) direct mail campaigns, aren't my clients' blog posts, podcasts, seeded social media messages and virtual world promotions simply adding to the clutter? If I'm being honest with myself, I'd have to raise my hand. I'm not replacing the noise (at least not in any meaningful way) -- I'm contributing to it.
Yes, even with the best intentions, I am still in the clutter business.
Now, I firmly believe that we will hit a tipping point -- a point at which the marketers that are experimenting with conversational marketing and social media today will dial down their interruption ad spending to a point where consumers will "hear" the difference (or more precisely, the silence.) We're not there yet. And as far as I'm concerned -- as both a consumer and a marketer -- I can't wait for that day to arrive.
So how about you -- are you in the clutter business?
