Politically direct mail, or Why politicians shouldn’t be exempt from advertising standards.

Both the Times and the Telegraph carry a story today that is by turns bizarre and wearily inevitable.

LABOUR has become embroiled in a row about the use of personal data after sending cancer patients alarmist mailshots saying their lives could be at risk under a Conservative government.

Labour hit by cancer leaflet row
TimesOnline

It’s not clear whether Labour actually targeted people who’d had cancer or cancer scares, but The Times sets out some anecdotal evidence which strongly suggests there was some targeting involved. Despite this, the Telegraph reports:

A Labour spokesman insisted that the leaflets – which were addressed to recipients by name and bore the words: “are the Tories a change you can afford?” – were not targeted at cancer patients and came from socio-demographic research that is commercially and publicly available.

Labour ‘used personal data to send cancer patients post about Conservative health policies’
Telegraph.co.uk

The “socio-demographic research” in question appears to be Experian’s Mosaic database, used by both Labour and Conservatives to target particular voters. Having been an in-house lawyer for two organisations that made extensive use of direct mail, I’m familiar with Mosaic, but I’d never realised it had this kind of classification in it:

The data management company Experian confirmed that both Labour and the Conservatives use its Mosaic database, which divides voters into 67 groups and identifies likely cancer patients using anonymised hospital statistics, including postcodes and the diagnoses of patients.

Labour ‘used personal data to send cancer patients post about Conservative health policies’
Telegraph.co.uk

As to the campaign itself, I hope the idiot marketing genius who thought this was a good strategy works for Labour rather than the Tangent Communications group.

That said, I suppose this was only a matter of time. Electoral print advertising in the UK – including direct mail – is relatively unregulated. In fact, political advertising associated with elections is exempt from complying with the CAP Code – which means the ASA can’t rule on it.

Eventually, some bright spark was going to say “Hey, I know! Let’s frighten cancer sufferers into voting for us!”. I expect shortly we’ll see the families of road traffic accident victims being asked to back policies on speed cameras, and the families of murder victims targeted to support the DNA database.

(Actually, that last one has kind of already happened. Leave it to Gordon Brown…)

This shouldn’t be a party political issue (and frankly it wouldn’t be if the Labour party, strapped for cash and needing more bang for its buck, hadn’t gotten here before anyone else). Why on earth should our politicians enjoy such an exemption? Why shouldn’t leaflets pushed through your door, or mailed to your house, be honest, decent, and truthful?

And why should political parties have license to abuse direct marketing – in a way Government ministers would cravenly queue to condemn were it done by a business – without fear of sanction?

Time for some amendments to the CAP code, I think.