Is ____________ The New Direct Marketing?

I’ve been reading Richard Feynman lately – Nobel Prize physicist, artist, drummer, safecracker, decoder of the Mayan Codex, samba band musician, troublemaker at the Challenger disaster hearings, a person of towering intellect and perfect integrity and a master at cutting through crap.

And now I’m pleased to put my reading to work: In a recent DM News interview Stan Rapp said that the name “direct marketing” is an inadequate descriptor of what we do. I think he’s wrong.

His call for a new name reminds me of something that Feynman said about knowledge: “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing – that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

Rapp talks about the impact of the Internet on direct marketing:
•    “Direct marketers were slow to see that we were looking at a totally transformed new marketing…”
•    “…reliance on intrusive TV ads as a dominant force in building brands and sales is fading…”
•    “…will interactive – sometimes referred to as digital – become the platform driving the new marketing, or will marketing directly be that platform?”

No disagreement from me. But when Rapp is asked if direct marketing is still the right name, he responds “No, it is not. The right term may be iDirect or it may be something else.”

Huh? Rename direct marketing because it’s changed? Here’s one definition the DMA uses for direct marketing: “Direct marketing is a database-driven process of directly communicating with targeted customers or prospects using any medium to obtain a measurable response or transaction via one or multiple channels.”

As far as I can tell, this still describes what we’re doing, even if how we’re doing it is gradually making a transition from paper to digital media.

Changing names means a lot of work for little measurable result (certainly not a fruitful pursuit for direct marketers). And it comes with some potentially troublesome baggage. The problem with giving something a new name is that it can fool you into thinking you have a new idea. Feynman also said: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Tags: digital, direct marketing, DM News, interactive, Richard Feynman, Stan Rapp

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Fred Petrick, direct marketing. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.