Post-delivery directing pays off

Junk mail: the two words most dreaded by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). It is also the phrase that its communications team, along with the rest of the association, has to endlessly explain is different to the advertising mail that it represents and advocates.

But in July last year, it wasn’t simply tabloid stories bemoaning the perils of ‘junk mail’, but a 30-minute long focus on the industry in the high-profile BBC consumer affairs show Panorama. In Why Hate Junk Mail?, reporter Tom Heap fronted an investigation into whether junk mail is bad for the environment, and also asked if the Royal Mail is “addicted” to illegal scam mail.

Rachel Aldighieri, the DMA’s director of communications and insight, first became aware of the programme when a producer contacted her asking the association for an interview. DMA executive director Chris Combemale was put forward.

The nature of the questions, and past experience trying to combat consumer and media criticism of junk mail, led the DMA to set up an award-winning crisis management plan to deal with the fallout from the programme.

“We would never go into something like this and think there was a good outcome. It’s very rare that a consumer-facing programme would be in our favour,” she admits.

The DMA is often called on to justify why businesses send out junk mail. “It’s a real challenge because everyone hates junk mail – I hate junk mail. People like to talk about it and moan about it,” she says.

The messages that the DMA put out as part of the crisis management were not new messages, explains Aldighieri, but its defence plan using social media helped it to reach a large audience.

With the help of PR agency Eulogy!, a social media strategy was developed to galvanise the support of DMA members and the wider business community.

Playing detective is one of the best ways to anticipate the kind of coverage brands can expect in the media, adds Aldighieri. “We’ve got contacts across many of the government bodies. So whenever there’s an issue that we think involves them as well, we’ll always speak to them about how the interview has gone and we’ll also speak to any DMA members who have been interviewed.”

She says: “We’ll try and gather as much information as possible as producers will never tell you the exact content of the programme.”

But although the media rarely takes notice of the difference between junk mail and advertising mail, Aldighieri argues that the Panorama coverage was extreme in the way it criticised the industry.

The difference between valid advertising mail (like a catalogue), junk mail (such as a takeaway leaflet) and scam mail (illegal post asking for money to claim a prize) was not fully distinguished in the programme, according to Aldighieri and other industry experts.

She explains: “In Panorama, they cut between some moaning about junk mail to Chris talking about the benefits of advertising mail. So, it looked like he was defending junk mail, even though he said in his answer – that they chose not to put in there – that we don’t support junk mail.

“He explained that junk mail damages the industry and that carpetbombing people is in no one’s interest. But that’s a message that takes the sensationalism out of the show.”

The DMA considers social media its best line of defence in refuting rumours, inaccuracies or negative stories. It was used in this instance to allow the organisation to clear up the difference between junk mail, advertising mail and scam mail.

While the DMA was fully prepared with its messages to defend the industry, Aldighieri admits that it was useful to have a PR agency on board to help work out how best to respond.
“Eulogy! was able to help us determine our [social media] strategy,” she says. “It came up with the hashtags #panorama, #junkmail, #panoramamail and monitored the response as the debate unfurled.”

The social media response also used a specially developed ‘toolkit’ that the DMA compiled to refute unfair or untrue statistics or figures. It featured various questions and answers that the DMA felt that the media and members’ customers could ask, along with reliable facts and figures.

“We sent that out 72 hours before so that it was close enough to the show that people would look at it, but gave them enough time to prepare,” Aldighieri adds.

The DMA’s proactive response also meant it called up a wide group of journalists that it expected to pick up on the BBC programme. “We knew that because it was a BBC programme, it would be pitched out to all of the BBC regional teams,” she says.

“For us, it was less about selling a story in to these journalists and more about flagging up that we’d be there should they want a comment. This led to securing eight live radio interviews, allowing the DMA to get its point of view across without being edited.”

A ‘war-room’ meeting with the DMA and Eulogy! was set up to monitor the coverage and social media response because, although the Twitter debate was going well during the show, at that point it wasn’t clear how the wider media would pick up on the story.

The defence plan worked, and rather than a barrage of negative coverage, there was no coverage outside of the BBC. And sometimes no publicity is the best outcome, according to Aldighieri.

Crisis management

“One of the biggest successes for us is that no other media picked it up. From a crisis management point of view, it’s not about column inches but about getting the media to understand and give the full story,” she adds.

And, while there was negative coverage watched by many households across the UK, being prepared meant there were no surprises.

Aldighieri explains: “We felt in control. In a crisis, feeling in control is really important. You’re not going to control social but at least you can have a strong influence, which you can’t have in [all]media.”

In general, social media has completely transformed the way the DMA now deals with negative coverage about the industry. This is in stark contrast to the way in which Aldighieri dealt with the ‘summer of discontent’ when she joined in 2006 as head of media relations.

Roger Annies, dubbed the anti-junk mail postman, was suspended by Royal Mail after telling people how to stop unwanted leaflets being posted through their letterboxes. This story “went huge” says Aldighieri, and ran in newspapers and broadcast media for about a month.

She says that she couldn’t quite believe the coverage sparked by such a story. Given that the only defence channel open to the organisation was the mainstream media, it was restricted in how easily it could put out its own messages.

“You’d speak to a journalist and give them all the facts and then we’d be lucky to get a line in at the end of the story, giving the other side of the coin. You’d feel almost cheated because you’d explain the story and explain that the DMA didn’t support junk mail either. But it just didn’t suit the agenda,” she notes.

Social media has revolutionised this process for the DMA. Aldighieri says even the ability to comment on stories online means that the organisation now has the ability to get its points across more openly and clearly than ever before.

Aldighieri admits that sometimes she wonders if the junk mail story has any more legs. With the deafening silence following the Panorama campaign, she hopes that people are bored of the story.

She is also optimistic that the work that the DMA is doing to educate the marketing industry about successful direct mailing tactics will mean less genuine junk mail and fewer media crises to deal with. That may be wishful thinking. But the DMA is ready and waiting to respond when the inevitable junk mail story rears its head again.