Sally Hooton attended the annual Golden Dove direct marketing conference in Hungary at the beginning of the month and heard how the modern, connected consumer is in full control.

The last time I was in Budapest, the sun was dancing across the Danube and the weather was unseasonably warm; this November, it was grey and dulled by rain. But on the conference stage, the debate was lively and all about a different kind of reign; the customer as king . . . or, in today’s market, a rather cool cat.

It’s not a new concept, comparing consumers as the loyal, reliable and trusting dog of yesterday to today’s, independent, fickle feline – and concluding that the current Customer 2.0 is a whole animal kingdom away from Customer 1.0.

But learning how to keep up with that cat and to master DM 2.0 is always topical. Thus, various international speakers led this packed, well-organised conference programme, attracting an audience of around 150 largely central European-based attendees.

Sponsored by Posta Direkt, the two-day event was opened by Hungarian Direct Marketing Association president, Péter Hivatal. He said use of direct marketing methods in Hungary had been increasing over the past 20 years and its share of adspend now stands at 16.5 per cent – for comparison, that figure is 53 per cent in the vast fatherland of direct, the USA.

Hivatal said Hungarian companies and the DMA had recently been lobbying against proposed regulations which could jeopardise DM in the region – and although laws have been tightened, their efforts had influenced lawmakers. He added: “I hope that, for a while, rules and regulations will not change and direct marketing can develop.” Later in the conference, consumer and data protection issues were discussed in a roundtable meeting with local authorities.

Among the top-level speaker line-up, US-based consultant Charles Prescott gave an informative overview of the international media mix and current trends and said that in the midst of the recession, all channels showed declines apart from digital – which grew, but only by five per cent (instead of previous annual growth patterns of between 30 and 40 per cent).

There is good news, however – trends that are showing a marked uptick are credit-crunch coupon-clipping (up nearly 30% in the US); purchase of grow-your-own vegetable seeds (up 60% in the UK; 30% Stateside); and the measurability of advertising on the Internet. Prescott said: “More money is now spent on Internet advertising than on TV ads in the UK – and this is a trend which will go global.”

He added that CRM – Customer Relationship Management – should be viewed as ‘Customers Really Manage’, as a new kind of customer is now in charge: “Digital Natives have grown up with the Internet and speak its language fluently; Digital Immigrants, like me, will always have an accent. But sooner or later, everyone will be a native.”

This Digital Native notion was picked up by speaker Péter Novák (managing director, Kirowski), who said: “These natives talk among themselves and recommend or discourage what people buy – this is ‘earned media’, which has increased during the recession. Consumers used to be like dogs – happy to see us and be controlled by us, but now they are cats, making up their own minds. Marketers, too, must have a different mindset.”

György Huszics (MD, Crane International) agreed but added that ‘Customer 1.0’ still exists and shouldn’t be left behind in the race to use 2.0 methods of communication: “Don’t forget, they shop too!”

Tamás Csomor (MD, Lowe GGK) pointed to ‘the dynamism of Twitter’ – while TV had decades to develop, Twitter had mere months to claim its huge social network. He said marketers wishing to deploy such social networks in their media mix should keep credibility, transparency and ethics uppermost: “Focus on the consumer, but be aware that your reputation is difficult to build and maintain. The empowered consumer will fundamentally decide how they receive media messages and through which media channels.”

Digital commentator and  UK-based entrepreneur, Jamie Riddell, discussed the rise in popularity of smartphones and mobile applications, saying marketers “have to be ready to reach the consumer . . . however and whenever the consumer is ready for them to do so”.

DMI magazine took its Talk Back Live platform to the Hungarian conference, debating whether the Internet is truly a DM tool (a resounding Yes was the concensus of opinion) and what marketing might look like in the next ten years. DMI columnist Ian Hughes (MD, Consumer Intelligence) chaired the roundtable discussion which concluded that DM industry players must evolve to harness the Internet for long-term success. There were fears that technology is racing ahead faster than marketers . . . the consensus was: catch up, or lose!

At the end of more presentations than I can do justice to here, I asked a taxi driver which currency he would prefer to be paid in – Hungarian forints or euros. He replied: “Since the fall of Communism, we accept anything.”

Clearly, the fall of the global economy (but the rise of the Internet) has proved that ethos is now being adopted by direct marketers around the world.