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The recent Bellwether report showed that direct marketing ‘budgets were revised down to the greatest extent in survey history’. Cue the clamour that this is further proof of the decline in direct marketing and the growth as if the two were mutually exclusive.

I’m a huge fan of the Bellwether Report but those who use it to comment on the health of our industry should read it in its entirety. The same report showed that the Internet continues to grow. This is every bit as important for our discipline.

There’s no doubt more direct marketing is done online. Therefore, is it not simple the case that direct marketing is being practiced across a wider set of channels? The reality is simple: the modern direct matter must embrace a wider skill set. The current agency landscape shows a plethora of agencies undoubtedly plying their trade in direct marketing. Alongside direct media agencies there is a new species, the digital agency.

Some of the finest examples of CRM are being executed online by practitioners who would never introduce themselves at dinner partied as direct marketers. I’m a huge fan of Nike+, for example, but what is that if not a brutally simple, wonderfully executed CRM strategy? It makes my life a lot easier and in return I gladly give them a vast amount of valuable data.

There are great examples of direct marketing being employed by organisations to build both their brands and their business. OK, so the days of the 4 million mailing may well be behind us. But so what?

I’ve got a plan; a plan I’ve stolen from our digital cousins. From now on, when referring to the work that I and all modern direct marketing practitioners do I’m going to refer to the birth of DM 2.0. If I sprinkle it through enough conversations, it may move the perception of what direct marketing is and isn’t. It seems to have worked for them.

Chris Whitson, planning partner, Stephens Francis Whitson