CLIENT OF THE WEEK - Why the COI's head of direct Marc Michaels believes "it's easy to be seduced by digital"

Q: What's been keeping you busy these past 12 months?
Campaign wise, it's been Change4life. The second phase was a very direct marketing-led, acquisition-heavy programme. We set a target for Change4Life and we beat it.

A massive part of my year has also been focused on evaluation. Measurement of our spend has always been important but the recession has made people realise, from a hard economics point of view, that you really have to justify the contribution that marketing makes to outcomes of government policy initiatives.

You have to know what elements of your marketing mix need improvement. In a complicated, fragmented media world, you have to get more sophisticated. This is why evaluation has been a major issue.

Q: Is there a solution?
We launched Artemis two years ago which was a major step forward, and has grown along the way.

However Artemis is only a part of a bigger activity currently called the Holistic Evaluation Initiative. We need to evaluate across the piece - not just research, response and conversion but also understanding effects of PR, buzz, events etc. It's a big overarching initiative - evaluating all our media and marketing investment.

Plus, it's a team effort ­- me, Mark Cross (Planning), Martin Dewhurst (Research) and many others in a central one COI hub with champions in each area, all working together.

There's a big specification out there for building the service, which has a database at the heart of it. Suppliers are forming into groups to pitch for it.

Pooling our knowledge is a great step forward, for example, there are currently 42 campaigns that have been evaluated through COI Artemis database and in response terms, Change4Life, for example is one of the most effective campaigns we've run in getting people onto the CRM programme and lessons can be learnt from that.

While Artemis is good at generating cost per response etc. measurements, we're also turning our attention to customer journey mapping and planning ­- and how we can improve customer journeys.

Through Artemis, we discover the barriers to conversion. On the phone or web - if a channel is part of conversion process, Artemis will see it and we'll ask ‘what happens if they do that?'. And ‘what do we need to do to improve that journey?'.

Q: Other goals?
It's also in my plan that COI will go for PAS 2020 [the green direct marketing standard] accreditation. We had our pre-assessment audit and did quite well.

Another issue is information and data security. COI already sets a good example but we need to make sure everyone is compliant.

Q: Isn't COI changing the way it looks at agencies, to remove the divisions between the ‘direct' and ‘digital' frameworks, for instance?
We're discussing how best to make it work in a more integrated way.

Q: What's the timeline on that?
Our framework review on the operational side - mailing houses, door drops, contact centres and face to face - is likely to start before end of year, with a new roster in place by next September.

Q: As COI's director of direct and relationship marketing, is your role strictly about offline channels?
The techniques are not as siloed as you think! I have a hand in digital - we do email and SMS for instance. Direct and Relationship Marketing and our Interactive Services division work together already on many projects - and we need to better reflect that on the new framework.

Q: Your spend on direct marketing increased in the last year - possibly the only client to do so! [The Government's spend on direct marketing grew by a third in 2007/2008, rising from £33.5m in 2007/08 to £45.6m in those 12 months.]
COI isn't spending on direct marketing - our clients are. If they're spending more, that's because direct marketing is proving to work. It's COI's job to put forward proposals for what would work most effectively on our clients' campaigns.

We strive to make sure taxpayers get value for money and campaigns lead to policy initiatives being successful and citizens benefitting.

Q: When you say clients...
I mean COI's government and public sector clients: the Department of Health, the Armed Forces, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS, formerly DTI) and many many others

Q: It all sounds very time-consuming. Are you still as involved in all those industry committees?
I'm still on IDM's management council and the DMA Advisory Board. I'm also still chair of ISBA's direct marketing and promotions group.

It's really important for COI to be part of the industry - making sure our expertise is as good as the best in the industry. We don't have a competitive set - there isn't another COI so to speak - so we need a way of comparing ourselves with what everyone else is up to.

Q: How hands on are you internally?
I've got six excellent teams in the division - we've grown Direct and Relationship Marketing within COI so that DRM is quite a substantial part of COI. But whereas I had nine direct reports at one point, I've now got two marvellous deputies - Robert Irons and Daniel Pallett - to whom the team heads report. It has freed me up to look at COI corporate issues.

So my role's been more about strategy this year than in the past - more in the thought leadership space. It doesn't mean I don't get excited or feel strongly when a piece of creative or a customer journey comes my way.

Q: And is creative exciting these days?
I'd like to see some improvements in copywriting generally.  But, I'm really proud of the stuff that makes the final cut.

Q: So what's your message to COI's creative suppliers?
The message would be to think hard about target audience and the need to stand out. You have to have a strong proposition (not just a nice visual treatment), to be really clear with the copy to convey complicated issues in a concise way.

And, think about where your bit comes in the customer journey - acquisition, initial response or CRM for instance ­- and how is that piece pushing people along those journeys.

 Q: In the commercial world, brands are falling over themselves to move consumers online. To what extent can COI do likewise?
There are always discussions about moving people online, but we also need to remember that 11 million people in the UK are not on the internet.

I recently wrote a paper on this issue, as well as an article for the mix, COI's quarterly magazine, in conjunction with Mark Cross, about people who are not online and the many millions who are light users.

On the RAF [recruitment campaign] we did a lot of work face-to-face, which was very successful, but the on-line activity worked a treat too. On tobacco If we can get smokers on the phone, we can convert them better than web or iDTV. The most successful channel for Change4Life response has been mail. 

It's easy to be seduced by digital, but it's whatever channel is appropriate to the audience. If people have a major problem, they'll still phone up but this means the calls get more complicated and agents need to be come more sophisticated.

But the point is that online hasn't replaced TV or calls - it's just found its territory. Digital is very big and very important, and all the other bits have reformed around it.

Q: Does direct marketing need to rebrand itself, as a technique?
22 years ago I wrote a presentation about how ‘DM is not just direct mail'.  The word ‘direct' is still appropriate - but people still think direct marketing is direct mail only. It needs to properly redefine itself as doordrops, inserts, calls, face to face, email and SMS - not just as direct mail.

Q: Your favourite campaign in past 12 months?
Change4Life, partly because everyone - our agencies, our client - the Department of Health and COI - all contributed to its success, and the excellent creative and media choices led to people signing up.

I am also proud of the swine flu campaign. It's an excellent of how quickly government can work to communicate with the public on an issue of national importance. When swine flu broke, all the parties involved worked extremely hard and fast to get materials out and it worked very well.

Q: Looking forward to the next 12 months...
My goals reflect COI and wider transformational government objectives around efficiency, effectiveness, value for money and creating excellent customer journeys that lead to behaviour change. None of these tasks are finished. It's all about continuous development and improving our activity.