The Next Ten Years in Creative
by Gregory Munford

More personalization? Longer teasers? ZZZZzzzzzzz. To me, the most important creative trend in direct mail is more of an un-trend -- something conspicuously not happening creatively.

To "see" it, of course, you can't look at the mail. (It's not there!) To spot it, watch TV -- the commercials. Then think back to commercials 30 years ago. Compared to 1975, today's spots are more layered, nuanced, ironic, sophisticated, indirect, engaging, less crudely "benefit-feature" driven. Then compare direct mail to 30 years ago. Not all that different, right? Compared to TV, direct mail "creativity" hasn't evolved much over the years.

Yes, the medium and task differ. But a deeper reason why our stuff seems comparatively stuck in a time-warp is that brand marketers are immersed in thinking, talking, and writing about a fact that direct marketers barely address: increasingly, our customers hate us.

One study shows that, bombarded with up to 5,000 ad messages a day, only 28 percent of people feel favorable toward advertising. Eighty percent feel inundated by all forms of direct marketing. If you think the Do-Not-Call list got 62 million signups in 12 months solely because they don't like telemarkting, good luck. Resistance to all marketing is huge. And growing.

So careful thinking about how to overcome that resistance now shapes virtually every aspect of the strategy, tone, style, and execution of brand advertising. By contrast, most direct mail "creativity" is still bogged down in variation testing (add gold foil!) or blind hunches. We can claim that transaction mail advertising is fundamentally different from broadcast brand advertising. But boring is boring. And how many packages do you see that make you wish you'd thought of that? To me, that's the one really important -- and scary -- creative trend out there.

Gregory Munford is president of Alexandria-based BMD and serves on the Board of Directors of the DMAW Educational Foundation. Reach Greg at gmunford@b-m-d.com.