DMA salutes Crozier's impact on direct marketing

Reacting to the news of Crozier's appointment today as the new chief executive of ITV, Keitch said he had been responsible for transforming Royal Mail into a more direct marketing-friendly organisation.

Keitch, the Direct Marketing Association's chief of membership and brand, said: "Before he joined, Royal Mail was losing money hand over first. It was an organisation that wasn't talking about itself as a media channel.

"As a marketing man Adam brought principles around advertising mail to the market. He wanted to talk about the Royal Mail channel as a media channel and I think that helped and is helping Royal Mail.

"It's a big ask though, to take something that is a monolithic organisation and turn it into something that is entirely a marketing and media-led organisation."

Crozier joining ITV "can only help the cause" of direct marketing, believes Keitch.

He said: "I'm personally delighted that he is going to ITV because it just happens to be an organisation that the DMA is forging ever closer links with."

The DMA and ITV this week published joint research claiming TV ad campaigns boost online activity by 175%, direct mail response by 143% and press ad response by 52%.

Keitch said: "We'll be carrying on doing additional work with ITV in and around this area to demonstrate how integration really does work ... hopefully [doing] promotion of thinking around media selection and audience fit.

"It's great from my point of view to have someone like Adam at ITV who believes in direct marketing. It can only help the cause."

Keitch also praised Crozier's record on raising and defending the profile of direct marketing.

He said: "He's spoken at many industry events, he's taken the time, he's sat in on things like mailing house forums. He clearly is someone who likes to keep a touch on the business, he's not remote, which I think is very easy to do for a chief exec, it's very easy to become distant from the business."

Speaking about Crozier's interventions when the industry was being attacked by the media with the "junk mail" label a few years ago, Keitch said: "I don't think it was his position to necessarily do that, but yes he did [defend the industry] on a number of occasions.

"We worked very closely with Royal Mail in terms of developing the arguments to counter the nonsense that was being talked about. He did plenty of media interviews but I don't think that was his primary task. I think his job was the stewardship of the organisation."