WRITTEN ON April 12th, 2010 BY chris AND STORED IN General

Today’s postman brought that increasingly rare thing: an interesting piece of direct mail. Arriving in an Amazon-style parcel, it appeared on first glance to be a fairly chunky book, entitled ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about direct mail’ (the 16th edition, no less).

Upon turning over the first leaf, however, this ‘book’ revealed itself to be largely hollow in the same way dusty library books used to hide the murder weapon in Agatha Christie novels. The large rectangular gap revealed an advertising slogan for MMC.

It was actually quite an effective tactic - I’m writing about it here, after all - but my first reaction wasn’t actually that; my first comment, in fact, was “it’s not very green, is it?”

To be fair, MMC do make clear on the book’s reverse that “not only is this book an easy read it’s 100% recyclable too”. They’d clearly prepared for the kind of reaction I had.

But what I think my reaction shows is just how differently many of us in the industry now think. Some people will never be convinced about the merits of so-called “junk mail” as a legitimate advertising channel, but the truth is the industry is taking its responsibilities extremely seriously when it comes to the environment.

And if you want proof, you need to look no further than the DMA’s latest report, which reveals that the industry’s green targets - set by Defra in 2003 - are being dramatically exceeded.

Indeed, the report highlighted how 76.5% of direct marketing material is now recycled - beating not just the 2009 target of 55%, but the 2013 target of 70%.

Most of the people I meet in the industry now have a very pro-green attitude, and that’s been reflected in the technological innovations we’re seeing.

Next month’s SMART-Drop seminar, which we’re involved in organising, is a great example of the lead now being taken by the industry in seeking to drive down waste levels.

The seminar will show advertisers how they can actually improve response rate while saving on print costs and lowering wastage.

Being environmentally friendly is no longer a hardship for the door drop marketing industry. It’s something that makes hard financial sense, and there’s no reason why the green targets won’t continue to be smashed for a few years yet.