Early in my career, I worked for an advertising/PR firm. Among the many departments was "Direct Marketing", and the director of that group insisted "It's not junk [mail] if they want it."

Crosshairs expresses similar frustration with the derogatory labelling of his product, attributing it to "ignorance of marketing, direct marketing, and their role in the capitalistic society we live in."

I think the key differences with the resented avenue of direct marketing — whether it be post mail, spam or (worst of all, IMHO) phone calls during dinner — are that (1) it requires effort on the part of the recipient and (2) it isn't properly segregated.

If there is a TV commercial or radio spot that I'm not interested in, all I have to do is ignore it and it'll go away. If it's a billboard, I just keep driving. In print, I just flip to the next page (which, technically, is doing something).

But I don't have that option with "direct" marketing: I have to delete the emails, retrieve and discard the mail and (blech) talk to some bored or agressive stranger who's trying to sell me something.

Don't underestimate the value people place on their own convenience and, conversely, resentment they feel towards anything that encroaches on it.

Another, more important aspect, is the fact that direct marketing doesn't know "its place".

With mail and email, it all gets delivered to the same box. You have to sift through all the unsolicited stuff to get the personal messages you want. I would imagine that the anger about "junk mail" and spam would dissipate if they went into ad-only folders and weren't interspersed with the regular stuff. As far as phone calls go, you don't know, when the phone rings, whether that is your friend on the other line or someone pestering you about changing long-distance providers. Instead, you have to get to the phone and answer it, or at least get over to your caller-ID and take a look before the fourth ring.

On TV and radio, you know when you're listening to an ad; there is a very clear fade-to-black between your regular programming and the advertisement. In magazines, if the ad is text-heavy, it gets the "Special Advertising Section" label. With billboards, well there's no confusing a beer ad for a "next exit" sign.

In fact, when those lines are blurred — infomercials, Bush ads comprising of "news" footage, paid search engine placement — there is a backlash.

While I'm not seriously advocating that everyone have marketing-only inboxes, mailboxes and voice mail boxes, contrasting that hypothetical with the current situation should shed some light on why people call direct marketing "junk".

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