From the editor

During the past few months, I have been privileged to spend considerable time with direct marketing professionals, educators, associations, and other organizations around the world. In most cases, I have been very impressed with the level of direct marketing sophistication, capability, and practice which they have demonstrated. In almost every instance, people are working at a very high level, and with increasingly impressive results. And that has been as true in Singapore as in Buenos Aires or Paris or Sydney. But, although the capability of both practitioners and academicians to develop and execute the strategy of mailing promotional packages and offers has increased, I found a mounting level of frustration about the availability of lists, databases, and other sources of customer and prospect identification. That's important, for it is the customer and prospect information which allows direct marketing to be really direct. And the concern is justified. Ifwe continue to be bound to antiquated name, address, and background acquisition, we will never reach the potential of direct marketing sophistication which technology is now providing. Part of the difficulty is, of course, in legislation. Increasingly, governments around the world, at the urging of consumer activists and legislators (often those seeking reelection who want a handy and convenient topic for political rhetoric), are finding privacy a high-interest, low-risk area in which to demonstrate their concern for potential voters. And, indeed, given some of the blatant misuse of consumer information by some less than reputable organizations, the concern is well founded. I will not debate the issue of privacy in this column, which is currently being investigated by both practitioners and academicians. Indeed, the pages ofthe]ournal have carried several well-researched and well-written discussions on that topic. In fact, the winning paper in the Direct Marketing Educators' Conference in 1994 dealt with privacy. Instead of laying all the blame for our lack of development of proper lists and databases from which to launch direct marketing programs at the feet of the legislators and privacy activists, I would instead propose that we have not really done all we can to help develop this critically important area. In fact, in many cases, we have done little at all to take advantage of the tremendous amount of information which is currently available but not being