When I finished College in the mid-1980s, I left with the deluge for London and began applying for jobs in advertising. I sent out more than 300 CVs, and the response was good. One day I had two interviews, just hours apart. I went into the first company and they asked me what I knew about direct marketing. I had to admit I knew nothing! They filled me in, but they were looking for someone who had a familiarity with the business. So I headed across town to the next interview, where they asked me what I knew about direct marketing. Fortunately, within hours I'd become an expert - I got the job.
I stayed in London for about nine years, keeping an eye on developments here. I came back a couple of years ago and joined this company. Direct marketing is all about marketing directly to individuals, rather than taking a mass approach. We would identify the target audience, and deliver to them directly.
It didn't really exist 15 years ago because the technology to do it didn't exist.
Suppose you had a bank with 500 customers and you wanted to sell them a new savings account. There are certain stipulations to open this account, such as you need £2,000 to open it and you need to have a particular income each week. Using their database, the bank can identify which of their customers would be most likely to use this account. Rather than have a campaign aimed at everyone, you can mail, or telephone, the people concerned. It's a much more efficient way of advertising.
The philosophy behind it is to try to recapture that intimacy people once had with the corner-shop owner, the man or woman who knew you, your extended family and all your needs. With direct marketing we try to ascertain what people's needs are and let them know what's available. You've no guarantee of success, but if you are reaching people with a product you know they would be interested in, you are raising the odds. It is also a very discreet way of advertising, from the company's point of view: you have a product and you only inform your customers. With something like a billboard campaign, you're also telling the competition what you've got - and next thing you know, they'll be offering it to your customers.
The ideal is to hit people with something relevant, that they will respond to - and they will think better of the company for providing such a useful service. People prefer the personal touch, and our results show that they do spend time reading over material they receive in the post.
Fifteen years ago the technology to do something like this just didn't exist. You would have had to manually go through data, identifying thousands of potential customers. Now it's all there, on good databases. I would agree with the assumption that the growth in individualism means people are not happy being fed mass production. Individual wants and needs have to be satisfied, and technology is now allowing us to do that.
No two days here are the same. I would be copy-writing for mailings, liaising with the graphics department and meeting with clients. You have to be very versatile, to know how to identify the key messages the client wants to convey and write a piece which will appeal to the target market - be it 15-year-old boys living in a rural area or an older generation living in the city. You have to be a chameleon, adapting your voice to suit your audience.
The best thing about the job is the buzz you get when an idea you've generated, especially in an unpromising area, clicks with a client. The downside is that we work with extreme deadlines.
Defining the job is quite hard - everybody mucks in. It's also very democratic: if someone comes up with a good idea, it runs, no matter which area he or she works in. You never know where the best idea is going to come from.
In an interview with Jackie Bourke
