Your obligation as a member and professional marketer

As a member, you'll be recognised as one of marketing's elite. This entails obligation as well as privilege.

The IDM's aim is to promote direct marketing as a profession and to raise standards of practice. As a member, you will be guardian of these standards. Whether or not you choose to play an active role in the IDM's affairs, you will be our ambassador, and we expect your professional conduct to reflect well on the Institute and your fellow practitioners.

Code of Conduct: Principles

The mission of The Institute of Direct Marketing is to be the standard bearer of individual professional excellence throughout all branches of direct marketing.
Professional excellence requires a level of innate ability, allied to learning, experience and dedication. But in addition it demands that certain positive, and negative, rules of behaviour are observed. The Institute has adopted this Code of Conduct, which shall be binding on all members, in order to make clear what these rules are. These rules are designed to help all those engaged in direct marketing, whether members of this Institute or not, in maintaining and demonstrating the highest professional standards of conduct at all times.
The guardian of this Code of Conduct is the Professional Standards Committee of the Institute. The Professional Standards Committee has a duty to investigate any alleged breach of the Code by a member, and to take such disciplinary measures as are consistent with the Articles of Association and with its own rules of procedure. The Professional Standards Committee, with the approval of the Institute’s Council, may amend this Code from time to time.
All members of the Institute undertake to adhere to the Code, and accept that a breach of its terms might result in disciplinary proceedings. All members agree that they will accept and abide by any conclusion reached by the Professional Standards Committee as a result of such proceedings, subject to any right of appeal that might exist.

Code of Conduct: Ethics

All members shall honour the Code in the spirit as well as in the letter—in other words, they shall not treat its provisions as obstacles to be circumvented by legal ingenuity.
No member shall unfairly or maliciously disparage another member or his/her work.
All members shall observe the highest standards of personal integrity in their dealings with each other, with their employers, with their staff, with those with whom they do business, and with the general public; they must at all times endeavour to act fairly and reasonably in these relationships.
No member shall pass off as his/her own work that is plagiarised.
In particular, members who may be in receipt of confidential information, whether belonging to their employers or their clients, or entrusted to them by some other party, shall at all times respect that confidentiality.
Notwithstanding the above, no member shall knowingly engage in, give countenance to, or help to conceal, any illegal activity. All members shall take care to acquaint themselves with the legal provisions that affect their activities.
No member shall engage, directly or indirectly, in activity that could reasonably be described as an intrusion on privacy, or that is offensive to widely held concepts of acceptable taste.
In particular, members shall not engage, directly or indirectly, in the production or dissemination of material that is, in common public perception, vulgar, dishonest or indecent.
No member shall engage in, or give countenance to, work that is intended, or might reasonably be expected, materially to injure, or mislead, any reasonable person at whom that work is targeted.
No member shall enter into a situation in which (s)he is exposed to a conflict of interest, without, at the earliest opportunity, informing any party that might be, or might reasonably feel themselves to be, adversely affected thereby.
All members shall do their utmost to ensure that they personally, and the companies for which they work, respect and observe the provisions of all relevant industry codes of practice. It shall be the responsibility of members to acquaint themselves with any published code relevant to their business.
All members shall endeavour at all times to act so as to bring credit to the direct marketing profession in general and to the Institute in particular, and conversely to do nothing that might reflect adversely upon them.

Code of Conduct: Professionalism

All members accept that the hallmark and essence of professionalism is that the quality of a professional's output is his/her primary consideration. Therefore, members are committed in their work to striving for the highest quality that they are capable of achieving.
All members shall at all times ensure that the work they perform is to the highest standard of professional competence which could reasonably be demanded of them; they accept that any significant and demonstrable failure in this respect could be a case for investigation and, if proven, disciplinary action by the Institute.
All members recognise the necessity not only to maintain standards of professional excellence, but also to enhance them, both at an individual level and across the profession—and to enhance public perception of them. All members will take every opportunity to bring the work of the Institute, and the existence of this Code of Conduct, to the notice of relevant persons.
All members recognise the importance of formal education and training in maintaining and enhancing professional standards. Accordingly, members accept the need to take full advantage for themselves of the profession's education and training facilities, and, so far as they might be able, to help extend these facilities to others in the profession.

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