I’ve worked in the marketing industry in the US for the last 5 years now, in a technological role and not as a marketer, so while I’ve never made the call to direction I have seen the repercussions after the fact. I say that to say that I have personally witnessed the positive ROI in doing a direct, physical, mail campaign. Sometimes it’s a much higher return than a complete online campaign (depending on the market obviously).

That being said, from a consumer standpoint, I agree with Gaby. It is an invasion of my information and (usually) exploitation of the social contract when Gaby gave the information in the first place (all she wanted was a pizza man which I’m assuming she paid cold cash for). I have personally never ordered a pizza and signed a contract saying, “Sure, please send me all sorts of crap in the mail. That’d be great.”.

Yes, there are Terms of Service agreememnts (TOS). The problem with those is that people rarely read them and even those that do can, and often do, misconstrue their meaning. IMHO it’s quite obvious that Terms of Service agreements are not a reliable way of informing the average consumer of what they’re in for. There. I said it

Anyway, while I just throw junk mail away it’s still a pain in the ass because I get soooo much of it, every single day, I’m always worried legitimate mail is stuck inside. So, in effect, while I’m looking for my mail I’m getting marketed to. I never agreed to that.

A lot of companies, thanks to the internet, have been using a lot more permission based advertising lately. I’ve actually signed up with a number of stores, such as Borders, for their weekly coupons which are great considering how much I read. Restaurants are great to sign up with as well since they tend to email coupons for free dinner when it’s your birthday, yum.

I think the reason I hate direct advertising so much is because at some point I’ve interacted with a business and they then (in my opinion) abuse that interaction by later using my details to contact me with adverts. I’m very much a “I didn’t give you permission to use [insert something like contact details, ideas or artwork here] in that way” person. That’s why spam through the letter box doesn’t bother me as much – they’re sending it to the house not necessarily to me unless it’s in an addressed envelope. My email is publicly posted on-line, so again that’s not necessarily at me because they just scrape whatever emails they can. But contact by phone just seems so much more personal and invasive because I don’t give that info out publicly.

You do have a point about ads not forcing or tricking people into anything. I’ll try to keep it in mind.

As a consumer I have to say, spam is no problem for me because I can easily put it in a recycling bin and it’s important to remember, it’s only spam if it doesn’t interest you but when it does it’s actually informative (I love receiving coupons for oil changes). I do however despise email spam since it takes more effort to dispose of (especially if you have a slow connection or just a slow computer).

Personally I find the perspective of people such as yourself to be odd. In my view, so long as the unwanted ad doesn’t force or trick me into interacting with it then I really don’t see the problem.