We all have a fascination with pictures. After all, they tell a thousand words or in the Sun’s case maybe a few less. But has our use of imagery overshadowed the real basis of business communication – namely our customer data? Can we get away with just using high impact visuals or are we becoming numb to the brain-draining dearth of images and messages that assault our limited mental storage capacity?

Your customers reflect your marketing and your marketing reflects your customers

I’m not generally one for philosophical maxims but this one strikes a chord and I’ve heard this phrase, which was originally written by American novelist, Mark Twain: “if you only do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got,” being applied in many ways – but the sentiment is consistent – if you do the same thing in business (or in your personal life come to think of it), the outcome is also likely to be the same.

Over the past couple of weeks there’s been quite a bit of buzz about Ben & Jerry’s dropping email in favour of social media. It stemmed from an email sent by their UK people to email subscribers, letting them know the monthly moosletter was being canned and asking recipients to fan them on Facebook. It’s not quite switching off email (they’ll use it still for special promotions) but it’s pretty close. According to the quite rightly other-side-of-the-story article, Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont isn’t following this particular herd, and will carry on regardless…

OK I will admit to being old enough to have been in DM in the 1980s. It was an exciting time. A combination of factors meant that Direct Marketing (a term which was coined around this time to include ‘direct mail marketing’ and ‘direct response advertising’) became ‘respectable’ and was even acknowledged for its creativity. The Royal Mail sponsored awards and there was an annual beano in Montreux to celebrate ‘the best of direct’.