Yet the UK seems not to have recognised the responsibility inherent in this role. If you look at the history of direct marketing in this country, we have moved from a system of best practice and self regulation to ever more stringent, external legislative control over the course of just a few short years.
The government now regulates how database marketers work with mass data such as the Electoral Roll, while data volumes are in decline due to growing consumer dissatisfaction, and the channels we are permitted to use have become congested and increasingly unresponsive as a result.
Take the case of telemarketing: unfettered use of this channel by the direct marketing industry kicked off the decline of self regulation with the introduction of the Telephone Preference Service, a system of consumer opt-out with severe consequences and penalties for misuse. Now permitted use of the channel has become reduced to such an extent as to become near useless.
This sad state of affairs has now been mirrored by the introduction of Australia's 'Do Not Call' Registry later on this year, to be half funded by the Australian telemarketing industry to boot, with forecasts predicting that 4m householders will join the list before the end of its first year, effectively closing the telephone as a channel to direct marketing use.
Where have we heard that before? Australia -- formerly a promising young market to direct marketers looking to ply their trade internationally -- is also now in its second year of non-marketing use of the Electoral Roll and looking to become ever more hostile to this valuable communications method.
And yet other countries with previously draconian policies on the use of data have been known to re-evaluate their positions.
In Italy, for example, until now only legitimate charities have been allowed to use the Italian Electoral Roll for marketing, meaning that a data organisation of similar size to ours could only offer 350,000 'mass market records' for its own country -- less than 1% of our own, 39m strong UK prospect pool.
The alternate source for information was the white pages of the Italian phone directory -- roughly 22m subscriber records. This would have formed an adequate data universe had its use not been made contingent on individual 'opt-in' by returnable forms -- only 5m of which were returned implying 17m opt-outs initially. After subtracting from 5m the spoiled forms, the replies where the respondent neglected to tick any of the boxes and the actual opt-outs, the Italian direct marketing industry was left with just 350,000 opted-in records.
Italy is now however beginning to move towards more active opt-in to direct marketing as opposed to implied opt-out. Yet this about-turn in policy is very much the exception, rather than the rule, and international marketers should not assume that a country such as Australia will simply reverse its stringent anti-direct marketing policy a few short years down the line.
In a time when international direct marketing campaigns are by and large still in their infancy, it is worth bearing in mind not only the damage to business and revenues that must be taken into account by continued bad direct marketing and data practice but also the fact that the UK does not stand alone -- we cannot afford to take a parochial view, either towards marketing channels or a specific country.
As such the homegrown direct marketing industry should take a good, hard look at itself and its actions -- and an honest one. If we are looked to as an example, we should act as one.
Disreputable behaviour such as long term ineffective suppression or continued misuse of a channel needs to be better regulated from within the industry rather than without, or we risk putting other international markets off direct marketing as well.
I doubt anyone can argue that practices throughout the industry are as good as they can be, or indeed that enough is done to tackle this. We should have learned by now however that if we don't address these persistent issues, the control is taken from our hands and applied from elsewhere.
Direct marketing trade bodies and marketing organisations with influence should seize the initiative and redefine 'self-regulation'. Lobbying the Government for acceptance of unethical direct marketing practices does not represent best use of influence moving forward!
Whether in the future the industry takes back control of its own and works to re-establish systems of effective best practice, or whether the government continues to exact more legislation over direct marketing practice, the UK will continue to be watched closely by the world as the testbed of practice and template for the international agenda. The sooner this is recognised in this country, the better.