Backchannelmedia

UK)

"YOUR favourite restaurant chain has an outlet one mile from here. There's a special offer on your favourite meal. Why not pull over and enjoy a break?" the synthesised voice suggests.

It's 2014 - only ten years from now - and a speaker in your car is tempting you with a pizza or a burger and chips.

Far-fetched? Maybe. Likely? Almost certainly, thinks David Metcalfe. After all, who'd have thought just ten years ago that at the click of a computer mouse you'd be able to arrange a mortgage from your living room.

Nowadays, the march of technology has us receiving offers not just through the letterbox, but via e-mail, interactive TV, mobile phones and internet pop-ups.

One of the other big changes seen over the last decade, is the growth of telemarketing via huge call centre operations to home telephones.

"I would put money on it that just a few years ago there was not a single TV advert that had an 0800 number with it," says Mr Metcalfe, the recently installed chairman of the Direct Marketing Association Scotland.

"There's been a huge change in the way people deal with products and services. A lot has changed in the last ten years," he offers.

The timespan he uses is a convenient one and takes us back to the year the DMA Scotland was formed.

"It used to be essentially just direct mail," Mr Metcalfe recalls.

Just six weeks into the position, Mr Metcalfe is preparing to host the DMA Scotland's tenth anniversary conference in Edinburgh tomorrow, where the past ten years' milestones will be debated and the next ten years' feverishly forecast.

To some, it's unsolicited junk mail whose dull thump on the hall floor in the morning wakes you up, or it's unwanted spam that clogs up your e-mail inbox.

But to the direct marketing industry's practitioners it's an ever- evolving industry that uses state-of-the-art data capture techniques - using tools like predictive programming to root out behavioural buying patterns - and packages future offerings in increasingly sophisticated ways that can make product or service offerings seem almost personal.

And whatever your view is, it works. In fact, with a 2003 annual spend of GBP 13.66 billion - up ten per cent on 2002 - in the UK alone, it is one of the country's top ten industries.

"That's substantial growth," says Mr Metcalfe. "The results of direct marketing are measurable in terms of a company's bottom line. A junk mailing approach to marketing is harder to measure the success of and harder to profit from.

"Because it's measurable, companies should be continually trying to get better and better in the way they approach people."

And he also wants to make clear: "It's not in either our best interest [as an industry] or the consumer's to flood them with mail. You have to target relevant people with the relevant offer."

The DMA Scotland acts both as an unofficial industry watchdog and flag-waver for best practices in an industry many consumers view with suspicion. But as far as anyone knows, there are no statistics to indicate how many people welcome genuine unsolicited offers and act upon them to their benefit. But those people will exist.

Mr Metcalfe is unequivocal. "More and more companies are using direct marketing to sell goods and services."

Mr Metcalfe - who is also head of wholesale banking for Lloyds TSB Scotland, after joining recently from group subsidiary Scottish Widows where he was head of direct marketing - is not paid for his two-year stint as the DMA Scotland chairman.

The 38-year-old, whose position covers Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland, says that none of the DMA Scotland council are paid for their roles.

"A lot of people in this industry are very passionate about it. I don't get paid and neither do any of the council members," Mr Metcalfe says.

To Mr Metcalfe, that translates to a willingness to follow DMA Scotland's guidelines on what is and what's isn't acceptable practice by its 70 Scottish members (900 in the wider DMA UK organisation).

The guidelines cover many areas, but include issues such as how many times a person should be contacted before a company removes them from their database.

"The industry's best practitioners follow DMA guidelines. Legislation, such as the Data Protection Act and other directives, also inform us," he says.

Any member deviating from the rules is kicked out of the association, which also runs the mail, telephone and business preference services for anyone wishing to opt out of receiving direct mail offers.

"By allowing us to run the preference services it's an endorsement of the DMA. I believe we're doing a good job, but we need to keep going," says Mr Metcalfe, who speaks of "real concern" about the rogue elements that try to undermine the best-practice message.

Voluntary policing of the industry through its own rules and compliance officers, is the best option, as far as he is concerned.

Whether an official regulator would make much difference to people receiving junk mailings is difficult to judge, says Mr Metcalfe.

"Much of it stems from outside the UK. Whether a regulator would have any influence there is open to question," he says.

Where mailings flood in from elsewhere in Europe, the DMA lobbies with the Federation of European Direct Marketing (Fedma) in Brussels.

"If it happens outwith those borders we just have to do our utmost to try and make people aware of it," Mr Metcalfe adds.

Many critics of unsolicited mail have turned their sights on the Royal Mail, accusing it of encouraging the practice just to make money through postal charges.

Recent research by the Liberal Democrats revealed 5.9 billion pieces of unsolicited mail fell through British letterboxes last year - 220 million items more than the year before. Overall, the Lib Dems said, that added up to 550,000 tonnes of paper and accounted for almost a quarter of the total unsolicited mail sent in Europe.

However, the Royal Mail is also a member of the DMA. And Mr Metcalfe sees no real conflict of interest between its twin positions.

"I don't see it like that. There are more and more channels opening up to direct marketers and the overall number of mail packs is dropping and becoming a smaller percentage of the mix," he says.

"It's better to have them [the Royal Mail] working with our association and understanding the industry issues rather than working outside it. It also helps to keep them accountable," he adds.

DMA Scotland members - which range from Lloyds TSB Scotland and Gleneagles Hotel to smaller operators such as Dunfermline Building Society and Pillans & Waddies - are vetted before they join for guideline compliance.

"We're not interested in them as members until they are in line," insists Mr Metcalfe. "We also check the financial status of companies to ensure financially unsound companies are not unwittingly given membership. Another guideline states that companies must agree to be the subject of a compliance visit."

While a mound of manilla on the hall floor may send a shudder down spines, shrewd operators operating slick and clever campaigns are reaping the rewards.

A Gleneagles Hotel campaign to market golf breaks outwith peak times resulted in a bookings boost, while an early Vodafone campaign targeting business users saw a corkscrew dispatched one day, followed the day after by a bottle with a message in it telling the recipient the company wanted to talk to them.

"They got face-to-face meetings with between 35 and 40 per cent of recipients, and had a great sign-up rate," recalls Mr Metcalfe.

Where the direct marketing industry goes over the next ten years is anyone's guess, but the signs are that it is likely to grow even bigger and more sophisticated.

And with satellite technology in cars growing in both scope and usage, don't be surprised if over the next few years you find your local burger joint trying to tempt you into a fast-food pit stop as you crawl through rush-hour traffic.