There’s a whole new world out there. Go see it for yourself.

I had a somewhat unnerving experience on Friday. It was unnerving because for a 59 year old male it was the largest gathering of females I’d been in – apart from a few family weddings. You don’t get that many of them at football matches. Too much testosterone.

Anyway, there I was, sitting in a large hall near Gampaha surrounded by 1,200 mothers and their 1-3 year old children on behalf of a client. I was people watching.

Nothing too strange about that at the office because we do quite a lot of it, but to someone brought up in the UK direct marketing industry it set me thinking.

How many UK direct marketers go and see exactly who they are going to be writing to? How many actually watch loyalty programme applications being filled in so they can see if there are any problems that generate poor quality data? How many curatives rely on a brief written by a suit who doesn’t have a bloody clue who his audience REALLY is?

What are they wearing? How old are their mobiles? What transport did they use to get there? All these are valid clues that help in creating the style and selecting the right words to use, yet all too often I’ve seen copy written in a style that has no bearing on the target audience at all.

Providing an agency with as much information as possible is one of the key ingredients of obtaining great approaches because it allows the writer a greater understanding of who he’s writing to.

Perhaps the direct marketers who sit behind their desks in London, New York, Paris and wherever else should get out more. Sitting behind a PC churning out rubbish briefs only produces rubbish copy and creative approaches.