Tim Sheahan, Printweek.com 15 July 2011-07-19

Door-drop marketing company Link Direct has demanded a right to reply from the BBC following its recent Panorama programme, Why Hate Junk Mail?, as the direct mail backlash to the show continues.

The BBC One programme has come under fire from all corners of the direct mail and print industry with many commentators arguing that it “confused matters” between so-called junk mail and fraudulent scam mail.

Chris Roxburgh, a director of Birkenhead=based Link Direct has now written to the BBC director general Mark Thompson stating that the July 4 programme misrepresented the industry.

He said: “This programme was fundamentally flawed, clumsy, ill-informed and unbalanced.
Roxburgh went on to argue that Panorama made a “damaging misjudgement” by focusing on junk mail during an investigation of scam mail.

“Our sector has nothing whatsoever to do with the scam mail and it is outlandish and deeply damaging to us that we were connected with this criminal activity,” he said.

Wednesday, 13th July.

Well, there will be one faction who will say, ‘It won’t affect my business at all’. Others may realise that the last two years have brought changes to our belief system that have changed us all significantly. We need to look beyond the issues in the media. See what you make of this argument…

The sub-editor of the Sunday Times, in Paxman’s Newsnight (BBC2) last evening, said that the British Press is the pride of the world. How ironic that he can still try and put that argument.

Love him or hate him, few would deny that Gordon Brown, as Chancellor and PM and his family have been invaded appallingly by the press. (Their baby son’s medical records? Whatever next?)

It appears that The ‘Royal Police’ have given away some of the mobile numbers of members of the Royal Family – believed to be for only £1000? A cheap trick.

Is one newspaper any more lilly white than another in its sourcing of material? How many terabytes of emails have been cleaned from hard-drives over the last week –with or without express direction from editors?

The banking crisis and MP’s expenses changed us. We believed that the bedrock of our society and pillars of the country could never behave like this, right? Now the Press and Police are under fire from House of Commons Select committees, there is about to be the most high profile Judicial Review in media history and (so far) nine are charged. More will follow as a result of the Review.

Seth Godin challenges our belief system in his book, Tribes.

People don’t believe what you tell them
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves
What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves.
Stories about the future and about change.

So how will the Nation and our customers respond?
Many of us may just have to change the way we market our brand.

Wow, what an outburst on Panorama last evening! (BBC1, 8.30, 4th July)

Quite clearly the BBC believes that Direct Mail is the scourge of the world. There was me thinking that the BBC used to be balanced and objective. Has it so seriously lost the Monday evening ratings that they have to produce such a partisan near-soap? (Perhaps they needed to sustain the momentum after Eastenders.)

Was presenter Tom Heap really on top of his game or was he just hell bent on venting his spleen on his personal view of direct ‘junk’ mail? Producer Andy Bell must have said, ‘Tom, m’boy, go out there, you hate direct mail. Kick arse and damn the consequences’.

The facts were badly presented; only Cornwall’s figures seemed to count in the programme. 700k pieces of ‘junk mail’ – over what periods and who counts them? They didn’t say. 3% of the overall rubbish is direct mail. (Not that bad, then.) It costs c. £119 per ton to recycle then it’s burned as fuel, they said.

On the other hand, DM drives £16billion in sales. £5.4 b is the total revenue from letters, £1.3b from advertising mail. The comment was made that without the latter, we wouldn’t have a sustainable postal service. All this was dismissed by the presenters.

The other really quirky bit of reporting came from the delivery of fast food offers, etc. They labelled this as junk mail, too. Hey, BBC, it may land on the same doormat but that’s called ‘door drops’. Hardly down to the Royal Mail.

The piece on ‘Scam Mail’ was presented as if the elderly are prey to scams at the design of the Royal Mail. You have already won £18,500 – sure, shameful exploitation of the elderly and vulnerable but the Police are on to it. Also, responses to scam mail can be habit forming, or ‘gambler’s fallacy’ as the resident psychiatrist called it. Let’s not forget that most competitions are quite legitimate. Clearly, Mr Bell thinks the Royal Mail should show some social responsibility.

The Royal Mail cannot open mail neither is it there to vet for authenticity or potential fraud, surely? One of the presenters put it that ‘the Royal Mail delivers coach loads of criminals to the elderly’. How can that comment be deemed objective?

The Direct Marketing Association taught me that if it’s relevant it’s not junk, if it’s junk, it’s not relevant. Simple. But should the Royal Mail make that call?