This is the view of leading PR and brand specialists interviewed by Direct Response after a spate of negative media stories portraying the industry as carpet bombers and intrusive cold callers.
The most recent portrayal has come in the BBC's 'Brassed Off Britain', a series of programmes currently showing direct mail and call centres as being major irritants to consumers.
"There's no doubt DM has an image problem and credit card companies are the worst transgressors," said Mark Rollinson, managing director of brands and integrated marketing at Burson-Marsteller. "I'd rebrand direct marketing as 'personal' marketing, but at the same time encourage the industry to promote its codes to the public, sanction the transgressors and then publicise those sanctions."
Codes of conduct are all very well, according to Rita Clifton, chairman of brand consultancy Interbrand, but what matters is actual practice.
"I would encourage the industry to rein in the carpet bombers, or if they're members of the Direct Marketing Association, encourage them to rein in themselves," she said.
Clifton believes that blanket mailers need to understand that the short-term revenue gain from such campaigns will be outweighed by long-term damage to their own brand, and that of the direct marketing industry.
Robert Phillips, founding partner of Jackie Cooper PR, believes rebranding is a necessity. "You have to rebrand or otherwise you're never going to get away from people's historic equation of direct marketing with floods of literature falling out of newspapers and on to your doorstep."
Meanwhile the industry is stepping up its efforts to dispel the "junk" mail tag with a new website , jointly sponsored by environmental group Planet Ark, informing the public about how they can reduce unwanted mailings using the Mailing Preference Service.
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