A Question of Ethical Direct Mail Advertising by UK Broadband ISPs
Today we’d like to pose a simple question, is the following direct mail envelope from a broadband ISP an appropriate way of advertising the service? The boundary between ethics and advertising is often a difficult tightrope to traverse, with many pros and cons to consider. But we are increasingly seeing the competitive market produce promotions that dip deeper into a grey zone.
On the one hand, there is often plenty of merit in being a bit controversial and bending – sometimes even breaking – the rules in order to get attention, particularly if the greater publicity is ultimately more productive than not (we’ve unavoidably played our part in this today by highlighting it). The fact that the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is typically fairly slow and soft in its response, such as when breaches do occur, certainly doesn’t provide much of a disincentive to this.
On the other hand, it’s sometimes still possible to dive too far into unethical territory and that could have an overly negative impact. But figuring out where to draw the line can be difficult. Advertising that thus subscribes to the old P.T. Barnum saying – “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” – thus still runs the risk of attracting reputational harm, boycotts, and financial losses etc.
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The focus today is, however, specifically directed toward Direct Mail adverts that come to your door. Getting advertising to work and be effective at this end of the market is a particularly difficult nut to crack, not least because the consumer subconscious has long since adapted to instinctively recognise routine junk mail and flyers. This is usually followed by the similarly subconscious act of automatically grabbing said flyers and sticking them into the recycle bin.
Suffice to say that advertisers have responded to this by getting a bit more.. creative. Over the past few years’ we’ve thus seen various questionable examples of promotions that appear to straddle the line. The latest one isn’t even particularly exceptional, but it is just one example of a tactic that we’ve seen used by a number of companies in recent times.
Example of the Direct Mail Envelope
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The chances are fairly good that, upon scooping up such a generically designed brown envelope from your letter box – one that appears to be expressing some importance and thus urgency for your attention, your first thoughts might well turn to worrying about its content containing one of the usual bugbears (e.g. unexpected parking fines, speeding tickets, HMRC tax warnings or perhaps a doctor’s letter with that result you’ve been dreading).
The structure of how the envelope is presented does evoke the sort of approach typically used by various government agencies, but by this point, our readers will already know from the context of this article that it doesn’t in fact contain anything worrying. Similarly, you can judge for yourselves whether the letter itself really does contain “IMPORTANT INFORMATION“, which may be somewhat subjective to each individual (or maybe not).
The Letter (Personal Details Redacted)
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So “IMPORTANT” was this information advert that the recipient informed us of how they promptly placed it in a bin of similar importance. Just to be clear, this is from a previously unfamiliar ISP, one that is merely harnessing CityFibre’s network (i.e. CF has nothing to do with the letter itself – that “Powered by CityFibre” wording merely references the underlying FTTP network they use).
Naturally, somebody receiving such a letter is clearly going to be more inclined to open and pay attention to it, but we’ll leave it up to our readers to decide which side of the line this sort of promotion should fall on. Is all fair in love and war advertising, or is this a bad approach to take. Each to their own. Readers are of course free to share with us any other examples of contentious Direct Mailings they’ve had.
Finally, there was a bit of a debate about whether or not to name the ISP who sent the promotion, not least because doing so might inadvertently give publicity to them and distract from the core message we’re trying to get out about advertising standards. The fact is that several providers are using a similar tactic, so what we might do is collect some more examples from our readers and then name a group of them, rather than just one.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I’ve seen adverts (for other industries) using exactly the same envelope colour as HMRC (this one you show you can tell isn’t) and even going to the trouble of making sure it doesn’t show “the occupier” by having first line of the address right at the top of the envelope address window (i.e. so it looks like the addressee is hidden above the window) so it’s certainly not a new tactic. I’ve likely just given them an idea for the next batch here…!
Legally speaking they are not doing anything wrong as far as I know, and I am fairly sure the ASA will agree. Morally speaking it’s certainly a questionable practice.
It’s not appropriate or ethical in any way, though it’s probably not illegal and given we have no effective regulation of advertising in the UK probably impossible to police. That’s exactly why it is the sort of thing that needs to be drawn to public attention.
If a company is attempting deception before you’re a customer, imagine what they will probably try if you were to actually become one. If I saw this I’d put the company on a personal ‘blacklist’.
Virgin Media used similar practices after cabling the area, which lasted for about ten years. I think in the end it took an official intervention to force VM to tone down the aggressive mail shots.
I don’t mind the junk mail as it’s easily disposed of, it’s the doorstep salesmen that are the real nuisance. Even BT/EE have been guilty of this and we have had 2 visits from their agents in the last year or so.
I agree, I must admit when Openreach first had their full fibre up and running here, I had a letter from Vodarubbish and I did get a little annoyed, thinking oh is that what we are going to get a load of rubbish from providers, no idea why it annoyed me.
I had a couple since from different providers. Zzoomm is the worst by all accounts, the amount of people that tell me about the flyers they get from zzoomm, but they are not direct letters I don’t think.
But yes you are correct, it is the doorstep salesmen that are more of a pain, but I don’t get them that often, the last one for broadband was a couple of years ago or so and that was Sky.
Maybe they see the cameras and think stuff it, hoping that is what keeps the TV licensing away as well.
I get more plastic bags through my door than anything else, asking me for old clothes, but my clothes are no good for anyone as I wear them until they fall apart, if they are no good for going out, then I use them inside.
Oh yeah and the threats of a visit from the TVL letters that come every few weeks, they go straight into the bin
Yeah and their latest technique is to open with “Don’t worry I’m not here to sell you anything.” (Salesmen in general not just ISPs although the first time I heard it was Vodafone.) Caused me to engage the first couple of times as I thought it might be something important. It’s the equivalent of the brown envelope trick. Now I’m wise to it I just go to straight to the usual “I’m not interested thanks”.
Register for the Mailing Preference Service, and in theory you shouldn’t receive this sort of nonsense direct mail. Although companies probably pay about as much attention to this as they do for the Telephone Preference Service.
I am glad you posted in theory.
Registered on MPS and the only junk mail that I receive are generic ones addressed to “The Resident” or “The Occupant” or leaflets/vouchers (Farmfoods, Dominos Pizza, local tradesman, local businesses etc.) who have paid the Royal Mail to have them delivered by the postman.
It’s definitely worth registering with the MPS, especially if you have junk mail delivered to previous residents/tenants of the property you’re living in.
GoFibre is particularly guilty of door sales harassment. I previously had 3 different sales agents at my door within the space of a week trying a hard sell. By the 3rd one I just closed the door again without saying a word as I was getting fed up of the time wasting.
At least with a letter/flyer I can just bin it without my day being interrupted.
I do often open these envelopes just in case one is a tax demand or something similar but as soon as you see all the colour I just bin without reading. Official letters are usually all black text/images etc not bright colours.
It’s a waste of paper for sure and if the companies want to waste their money on this kind of marketing that is up to them.
Hard to pick on any marketing options that are morally better. For instance the use of plush toys that usually end up in landfill at some point, is that good?
I think it is more important to worry about misleading ads such as those promising something for free when it isn’t or small print that doesn’t highlight price rises, or even a big bold offer price but with mid contract price rises. Those should be banned completely.
Is Wifi 6 state of the art?
I live on a relatively new estate. We’ve got openreach FTTP and nexfibre have added their lines recently. We’ve then had Virgin Media doing door-to-door. Some on the estate said they were promised certain things, which weren’t given. So there can be issues that way too, rather than just leaflets through the door.
Oh no, however will they manage without Wi-Fi 7, my heart bleeds.
Bad not to have some (even minimal) branding / company identifiers on the outside.
Once I found out what it was, the result would Direct To Recycle Mail, regardless of the offer. Can’t trust a company who seeks to deceive from the get go.
I was getting sick of VM and BT/EE with junk mail to my door that I ended signing up to the Royal Mail’s Door To Door which stops all unaddressed e-mail from being delivered. Furthermore, when the cold callers come around there is a sign that I put up just above my doorbell which basically says no to cold callers etc, and it seems to work as I have a video doorbell and as soon as they see that sign they just walk away.
I got this one the other day.
It did annoy me. On the other side of the flyer it boldly states “Funded by UK Government”. That statement troubles me a lot. Firstly are they saying this company is funded by UK Government? I very much doubt it, but that’s the way it reads. Some people might assume that means it’s a subsidised service. Again I assume it is not.
The envelope was picked up by my wife who looked at it for a while and asked me what it was. Obviously I said just open it and you’ll find out. But yes it bothered her. She does get NHS letters and this sort of brown envelope does raise the stress and blood pressure levels.
In my opinion it crosses that ethical line.
Junkmail is junkmail. Unsolicited marketing is unsolicited marketing. At best, it’s litter and environmental waste.
I’ve also seen similar text on junk mail envelopes before. But brown envelope or not, the presence of “Addmail” in the return address is a dead giveaway it would go to recycling PDQ.
The ad itself would also benefit from the use of the Oxford comma.
I always obscure the name on the envelope, write, “not at this address, return to sender”, and dump them in the post box.
That’s a dastardly idea! … I think I might try that.
The ASA is the body through which the industry self-regulates. They only do as much as necessary to keep the industry out of having regulation forced on it by Parliament. Beyond that, they are happy for advertisers and publications to do what they want.
At best this will get a slap-on-the-wrist, and be forgotten about within months, letting someone else repeat the idea later.
Ogi laid their own network in my village in south wales last year. They’ve been aggressive in door sales. The same woman knocked our door twice and even though she was told we’re in contract with another isp, she still pushed her card onto us and said for me [who deals with the home network] to call. It’s been incredibly annoying.
I do think the junk mail needs to stop from all of these companies. Virgin media, sky & ogi are the worst for it.
I’m fed up with these mails – the village has had City Fibre put their network and (numerous) street furniture in. I’m not sure how many companies use CityFibre as carrier but I’d wish they would work together on sending stuff out. The only benefit I can see is it ought to be more money into the postal service coffers to keep them going affordably. Sad for the CityFibre users they are about 10 years late to the party as that is how long the part of the village I live in has had BT/OR FTTP.
Many companies use Cityfibre but Cityfibre will often offer certain providers a time limited exclusivity deal in a new area so you may find you get just one company at first, then the others come in thick and fast a few months later.
I really don’t get much post nowadays and you can generally tell what’s important and what isn’t so I don’t tend to fall for these. What does annoy me though is Community Fibre telling me a few times a month about their deals when it’s not even available in my road. My road was missed for some reason – we raised this with them at the time and they said it’ll be a few months but they’ve since stopped cabling. It’s irritating as every other road around me got it.
Talktalk are a nightmare for junk and they often use fake names on the envelope which probably gets around any marketing rules. When I get one of these, I cross out the name, write “not known at this address, return to sender”. Or, occasionally I’ll group a few together, stick them in an envelope and send them all to their head office without a stamp.
This doesn’t appear to be from TalkTalk though.
Doesn’t bother me, it’s not pressuring or implying they’re the only one available.
The only really transparent way to push fibre when rolled out in an area. would be for openreach to do it and tell people to contact providers.
Sorry didn’t mean to imply openreach were the only ones building. Only that they don’t have their own tied isp.
Being honest, I don’t think the readers of ISP review are the targets for these mail drops. FTTP take-up rates continue to be very low, which is a particular concern where publicly funded work has been carried out (Project Gigabit / Reaching 100% etc). Working for a Scottish Local Authority, we have had to resort to mail drops to resident’s whose properties have recently been upgraded to FTTP. It was genuinely surprising how many people got in touch with us on the back of the letters, explaining they had no idea of the upgrades. Particularly in areas where it wasn’t Openreach that delivered the upgrades, residents generally had no knowledge of the operators and ISP’s that were now available to them – so in these instances, mail drops by ISP’s make a whole load of sense. Additionally, fixed wireless operators, enhanced 4G systems operators and other alternative broadband solutions providers need to find any way they can to advertise their solutions to residents in “Very-Hard-to-Reach” areas, and mail drops are the most effective, non-digital way of getting word out.
Actually quite poor if gov funded or supported roll outs aren’t being pushed. I assume most people won’t be registering with openreach for rollout updates either. You’d think getting people signed up is kind of the point. But then the gloss is more likely in the number of properties served as its a bigger number.
I’m in an expensive to reach area and haven’t heard anything from the government about plans in my area. Apart from telling me I could have part funding for an alternative connection as my line is so slow, but only if I had it done through a list of installers none of which were local and their offerings were awful, so installed starlink myself.