Tending the greenery

Earlier today I attended the official launch of a new standard for the environmental performance of direct marketing.

There is some very good news here. There will be a proper BSI kitemark which can be included on qualifying material to demonstrate to consumers that something is being done. There are assessment tools, progressive levels of qualification, and a system that's got the independent credibility of the British Standards Institute. And it ties in with the Royal Mail's launch of Sustainable Mail (although this hasn't actually been approved by Postcomm yet) where there's actually a price advantage for doing the right thing.

One of the tools - see the greendm site here - might cause a ripple for companies who have spent considerable time and effort developing their own bespoke tools to calculate environmental effects of marketing campaigns.

Next step is to see how this works out in reality. A couple of financial services clients are lined up to run pilot projects very soon, and doubtless there will be lessons to learn.

The bit I don't understand, is why the DMA is not making compliance a mandatory requirement for membership. DEFRA (who were part of the launch) made it clear again that it would intervene if the industry did not take sufficient voluntary action to meet its targets for waste prevention and reduction. Yet the DMA people talked about the 'competitive advantage' which would accrue to businesses who followed the new standard, and that compliance was voluntary.

There's a disconnect here. Surely if this initiative is the DMA's best shot at satisfying DEFRA, then they should enforce it across their membership? If only a few companies go for this 'competitive advantage', then we don't meet our targets, and DEFRA will have to step in. DEFRA is unlikely to work with the DMA the second time around.

Once I've had a chance to read the technical details about the scheme (there were about six printed copies available this morning, and I was at the back of the room ...) I will post again.

Who's in charge?

Apparently there's a reduction in DM spending.

Well, yes, but ...

A large agency network has lost 14 projects in the last couple of weeks from a single client. The agency would have needed to hire freelancers to finish the work on time, and the agency's FD had told everyone he/she needed to give approval of anything which couldn't be done in-house. When a week later the agency still hadn't said it could do the work (because they couldn't get an answer from their FD), the client quite understandably gave it to another agency. Note, the client spend did not change.

It is entirely possible to create your very own recession, if you really want to.

Photo: chefranden

The ship that didn't launch

Just caught up on some news from Australia (an excellent blog called VeeDeePee), where Vodafone has decided that nobody will get printed statements any more, and they will all be online.

For those of us looking at the opportunity to improve the effectiveness of transactional mail by including relevant marketing messages in customer statements, it's a helpful reminder to think about the whole media mix.

Of course there is still an opportunity to introduce relevant marketing messages online. In fact, there's also the interesting idea of being able to change those messages over time - so that if you are reviewing an old statement, the marketing message can change from the one that was there when it was current.

Nonetheless, this is a wake-up call. Some clients are moving a lot faster than their agencies and service providers expect.

Photo: bobster1985

Balancing act

Important time now for the new business: some serious interest from some seriously interesting people; need to work on funding (which needs business plan); need to work on the network who will help deliver the service; need to set up meetings and generate some business. All are important. The balancing act, is to devote the right amount of energy and time to each. The mental balancing behind that, is to do the important stuff first, even if - especially if - it's the stuff that I enjoy least (like say, picking a completely random example here, setting up meetings).

Fortunately, I've decided I have to write a blog posting first.

Photo: tourist_on_earth