From the practitioners

Direct marketing is not new. In its most traditional form, direct mail, it's been around for more than a century and a half. But it is evolving. What is new today is the environment in which not only direct marketing but all manner of marketing communications-including image advertising, public relations, and sales promotion-must function. There's a new game in town: the technological fun house that is being driven by the digital revolution. Fiber optics, microchips, multimedia, the digital superhighway-this new game presents an enormous opportunity to marketers, Other people in my business might have a different opinion. They might say it presents an enormous threat. One thing is guaranteed, the new game is sure to have a new set of rules. In this century, there have been two major upheavals in the advertising business, Both were driven by a fundamental change in the underlying technology of the media that delivered the advertising to the consumer. The first was radio, the second was television. Radio changed the rules by adding sound, freeing advertisers-and audiences-from the printed page, TV added sight and motion, opening up a vast new array of creative possibilities. Importantly, both these developments made it easier to reach a mass audience. And once these consumers were reached, it was easier for advertisers to engage their attention with a persuasive selling message. What are likely to be the rules of the new gamedriven by the digital revolution? The emerging new technologies will surely deal with smaller audience sizes, rather than larger ones brought together by radio and television. This is an omen of the fundamental changes that are about to occur. Simplistically, when a pie is cut into 500 pieces rather than three pieces or nine or even 50, every piece is considerably smaller. And who's to say that every piece will carry advertising? Also, whereas previous media revolutions made advertising harder to ignore, this new game will actually have the opposite effect. It's not only that advertising will be harder to find among all those channels; just as important, it will be easier to ignore in an on-demand environment. So what will we have? Smaller audiences, harder to find, and advertising that is easier to ignore. In a nutshell, it's the rationale of the doomsayers. Ironically, it's also the very reason for my optimism. I see this new game as an enormous opportunity.