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IT'S A GREAT TIME TO BE A DIRECT MARKETER.

Every survey points to the fact that marketing executives want performance-measurement tools. The leading buzzword today is “accountability.”

They also want interactivity and the ability to market to the individual through targeted media — the staples of direct marketing. But few are getting these things, judging by a spate of books on the subject.

Take “Branding Iron,” a new work on the automobile industry by Charlie Hughes and William Jeanes, an excerpt of which appears on page 32. The authors write that most auto companies mouthing the cliché that they needed to sell to their customers one at a time didn't mean it.

“At the time this wisdom was being trotted out at every major auto show press conference, the industry was buying media by the pound. Network television's cost per thousand ruled the advertising mindset. ‘This audience skews too far female.’ Or, ‘That's OK because it only costs us peanuts per thousand for the 35- to 55-year-old males that we want.’

“Does this sound like selling one at a time? Of course not. We bought ad space and time by the ton and not by the individual. We talked individual marketing, but we behaved mass marketing — in a world where only one-half of one percent of the U.S. public buys a new vehicle each month.”

Feeding this sorry state of affairs is the mountain of research produced every year, Hughes and Jeanes continue.

“Buyer studies, shopper studies, consumer satisfaction indexes, buyer intention studies, transaction studies, dealer satisfaction studies, and on and on and on. What has all this research accomplished? In the auto industry, it has acted as a homogenizer…an entire industry poring over the same data — and believing it — produces few original thoughts.”

To some extent, those syndromes still prevail on what is quaintly referred to as “Madison Avenue.” Clients want what's offered in the one-to-one tool kit, but find it beyond their reach. This is reflected in their mass media buys and the creative that goes with them.

And many ad people still have a condescending attitude toward direct marketing, even though a DM agency head now runs a general agency as well.

The only answer is to repeat a parody that ran in Mad magazine many years ago. An agency creative sings the following to the tune of “On the Street Where You Live”:

Oh, what a towering feeling
When they buy an idea of mine
Like the one of the pretty girl peeling
As she sings her praise of Manischewitz wine.

Not much has changed, judging by the specimens of brand advertising that Tom Collins comes up with.