Who Invented Direct Marketing And How Has It Transformed?

The golden rule of marketing in fields such as life sciences and medical technology is that it is not just about what you proclaim but what you listen to in response, and one of the biggest goals of our specialist teams is to ensure you not only get conversions but the insights you need to maximise the potential of your business.

Marketing is an industry that is constantly in a state of flux, partially due to the influence of ever-evolving mediums, but also due to the changing needs of the target market that any product or service must meet to succeed.

To understand why the best practices that work today exist, it is beneficial to explore some of the pioneers behind direct marketing more broadly, and see which lessons have been learned from, both in terms of what will always work as well as the techniques that are no longer effective.

The Father Of Modern Marketing

Much of the history of modern marketing and branding begins with Josiah Wedgwood of the famed pottery family company of the same name.

Whilst the elder Mr Wedgwood’s biggest achievements were in his scientific approach to pottery making, such as kiln thermometers, earthenware materials and distribution of labour that predated assembly lines, perhaps his most impactful innovations were in the field of marketing.

Whilst the maker’s mark has always been a part of pottery since Ancient Egypt and the use of thumbprints as identifiers, Mr Wedgwood was perhaps the first to turn his potter’s mark into an outright brand,

This was aided in no small part by an early order from Queen Charlotte that allowed him to claim his pieces were approved by English royalty.

Beyond this, whilst not the first to use travelling salesmen or catalogues, he was the first to use the former in a way that is recognisable in more modern forms of direct marketing, and it would take decades before his contemporaries would truly catch up.

Some never did, taking the wrong lessons away from his innovative marketing techniques by focusing on trying to pressure, panic or catch a potential customer off-guard rather than engage with them on the same level.

The Wedgwood Riders, peddlers or Manchester men had trays of samples, were highly knowledgeable about the products on offer and provided catalogues for free packed with illustrations, engaging with people in their territory as fellow locals.

Evolving With Technology

The Industrial Revolution led to a huge shift in marketing, but the biggest transformation in direct marketing arrived with the invention of the telegraph by Alfred Vail working under Samuel Morse and later the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.

The invention of the telephone would change the world of marketing on a fundamental level, as it allowed people to develop a more personal connection with potential customers without having to personally meet with them or travel door-to-door to engage with people.

Astonishingly, it took a rather long time for telemarketing to become a widely used and structured form of direct marketing, in no small part because of the costs involved and the need for manual validation of leads.

Elements of how modern specialist direct marketing emerged in the first part of the 20th century, with small groups calling each other to find potential buyers.

Typically this happened in local communities, where people would create baked goods, clothing, textiles and arts and crafts before calling around to sell them to people who lived nearby, using a far more conversational technique than the already criticised scripts typically used by door-to-door salespeople.

This began to be codified with early forms of network marketing, where products and services were set up to provide products for people to sell in their local communities.

Many of these innovations were disrupted somewhat by the two World Wars, but following the end of the Second in 1945 there were further developments that shifted direct marketing into the recognisable form we see today.

Relationships Beyond Sales

In 1947, whilst working as a copywriter at Maxwell Sackheim & Co., Lester Wunderman noticed that the mailboxes of clients could be used to form a more personal connection with customers and in doing so coined the term direct marketing.

The concept had already been used long before him, but Mr Wunderman was the man who made it a foundational part of marketing campaigns, and combined it with freephone telephone numbers, subscriptions, loyalty programmes and a wide variety of other approaches tailored to particular clients.

He advocated for a highly data-driven approach that would target customers based on products and services they might actually buy, and combining that with a personable, conversation-based marketing strategy is the key to success that many companies use today.