Columnist Ian Hughes rants about the latest issues affecting our industry. This time, his topic is about ‘Changing the D’.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about how much I hated that the M in DM still stands for Mail for so many people. Attending the recent DM Days in New York (DMDNY) I was struck by the fact that I should probably also get equally irritated about the D.

Direct Marketers feel the need to call themselves Digital Marketers, because they so badly missed the boat on understanding that electronic E was actually a D!

There was a time when the D in DMDNY stood for Direct and the M pretty much stood for Mail.

Now the D definitely means Digital, in fact it’s called Digital Marketing Days and is collected with TWTRCON (which is focused entirely on the business use of Twitter) and Internet Week.

So now it’s time for the UK to get its act together and other DMAs around the world. Look at the list of DMA councils on www.dma.org.uk 

You have:

• Agencies
• Contact Centres and Telemarketing
• Data
• Door Drop
• Email Marketing
• Field Marketing
• Financial Services
• Inserts
• Mailing Houses
• Mobile Marketing
• Response Management
• Business to business
• Creative Forum
• Creative Council

Now look at the same list for the US DMA:

• Agencies
• Analytics
• Broadcast
• Business-to-business
• Catalogue and Multichannel
• Circulation
• Contact Centre
• Customer Relationship Management
• Email Marketing
• Hispanic Marketing
• Insert Media
• Insurance & financial Services
• International
• List and Data
• Marketing Technology
• Mobile Marketing
• Nonprofit
• Pharma and Healthcare Marketing
• Retail Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing
• Social Media
• Travel and Hospitality

Now, I am not suggesting that the UK DMA or that any other DMA should copy the USA DMA.  What I would say is that, in the last 12 months, more money was spent on Google in the UK than was spent on TV’s Channel 4 advertising.

 And Search Engine Marketing and Social Media are not even on the list as far as the UK DMA is concerned.

 Can we all say, “Huh?”

 Is that the coffee I can smell brewing? 

Perhaps it’s time for the UK DMA to wake up!

Ian Hughes is managing director, Consumer Intelligence. Email: ianh@consumerintel.com   Twitter: ianchughes  Facebook: ianchughes   And on LinkedIn.