Here's Richard Reed, one of the founders of Innocent - the smoothie brand, talking about how they came to set up the business, their business ethics and the importance of integrity in business. It's a five minute clip that's a little out of sync but well worth it.

On friday evening a couple of us went to see one of our clients, James, appear in Ibsen's 'A Dolls House' in Leamington Spa. He's described by the lead character as that 'lawyer fellow called Krogstad - you wouldn’t know him. He’s crippled all right; morally twisted' A very persuasive performance...

Online marketing gives marketers all the tools to measure the effectiveness of direct response campaigns. In conversation with Mark Hodkinson of Think Media in Manchester we discussed the meteorite rise of digital marketing and the impact it's having on other media.

The vast majority of online spend is going on pay per click activity, with Google Adwords taking the lion's share over Yahoo and Microsoft. The fact is that Google, through its clever algorithms, produces more relevant search results than anyone else and is therefore generataing better quality leads for its advertisers. Click through activity (whether PPC or SEO) is however much more effective when supported by offline activity.

Client now face a plethora of marketing specialists clamouring for their time and marketing budget. Mark believes that what's needed are agencies that can take a good strategic view over all routes to market and develop a truly integrated approach.

Interesting post from Hugh Bessant on his Brand Republic blog, on the undue level of criticism that the direct marketing industry receives:

"Once again, we are getting castigated over waste, because everything we mail is junk, isn’t it? Yet again, the DMA are on the defensive, and everyone is nodding and agreeing that we have to do more about waste.

Why? No one else is. One trip to the local supermarket produces more useless packaging than comes through my letter box in a week. Each local free paper that flops through my letter box unsolicited gets no more than a cursory glance on the way to the re-cycling box. Plastic shopping bags, 4x4 the size of my old school bus, the sections in the Sunday papers that no one ever reads, the fact that you can only recycle certain bits of plastic...I could go on.

So why turn all the ire on us? The reason businesses use direct marketing terchniques is that they work. People buy from the comfort of their homes or offices every day. Does anyone really think they open an unsolicited envelope, curse the damage to our blessed planet, rail against the vile satans of marketing and then fill out that application form for a new credit card?

Yes, we should all target better. We all want to target better, actually. No one wants waste. Suppression is a ‘good thing’, like eating your 5 portions of fruit and vegetables per day, or flossing your teeth. No one wants to mail dead people. No one wants to mail people who definitely are not going to buy their products. But for goodness sake, let’s keep things in proportion."

I couldn't agree more. As direct marketers we have a vested interest in boosting response rates. While John Watson taught me that testing is king I find it's often a battle with clients to encourage them to test new and innovative creative ideas. It's also true that it's often cheaper to mail without suppressing goneaways because of the initial cost of flagging those records as 'movers'. The accountability of direct marketing is a double edged sword because it's too easy to focus on the 90% who don't respond and not the financial and economic benefits of the minority that do.

'Is this the truth?'
'You can't handle the truth son.'

With thanks to Chemistry Digital

Microsites can be used very effectively to support offline activity. Event management microsites for example, such as this one here that's been developed for JCB, gives customers an additional way of registering for the event. It's enabled us to collect information quickly as well as provide the customer with an instant confirmation of their preferences. It's also given immediate access to the client and the dealer network, through the back office system, as to who's registered for what and in who's patch.