1 September 2009 - John Jay Daly, the man who developed the idea that consumers should be able to opt out of 'direct marketing' advertising, has died aged 80.
Mr Daly was vice president of the American Direct Marketing Association when, in 1970, Congress was considering legislation aimed at restricting junk mail. The proposal was to make it an offense to send advertising mail without the prior consent of the recipient.
The idea that junk mail could only be sent with the recipients approval was fiercely opposed by the representative of bulk mailers in the United States. But while most marketeers argued that bulk mailers had a constitutional right to say anything they wanted, as often as they wanted, and in any manner whatsoever, Mr Daly made an alternative proposal; instead of seeking recipients permission, people should be able to 'opt out' of unsolicited mail by sending postcards to a central address.
The compromise was accepted by Congress and soon led to a plethora of junk mail opt-out schemes. In particular in the UK the 'opting out' concept has taken off. The British Direct Marketing Association (DMA) set up the Mailing Preference Service in the 1980s, followed by similar schemes for unwanted telephone calls, fax messages, and even baby related junk mail. Royal Mail has an opt-out service for unaddressed mail delivered by the postman, and after pressure from Defra the DMA introduced an opt-out service for leaflets delivered by members of the DMA in 2008.
The list doesn't stop here. People can opt out of receiving paper directories such as the Yellow Pages. For the relatives of people who have died there is either the Bereavement Register or a Deceased Preference Service. Voters who want to stop their local Council selling their personal details can opt out of being on the edited version of the electoral register. And of course you can tick one or more opt-out boxes every time you give your name and address to a company or charity.
The prediction of some of Mr Daly’s colleagues that the new policy would kill the direct mail industry did no materialise. ForestEthics, which is campaigning for a central opt-out scheme in the United States, estimates that every year 100 billion pieces of junk mail are delivered to American householders every year, and that one third of all the mail delivered in the world is American junk mail.