Lib Dems Done

Well it would appear the Information Commissioner agrees with me! The Office of the Information Commissioner has, today, decided that the Lib Dem's automated calling campaign they instigated last week was direct marketing, designed to promote the Liberal Democrats, not to conduct legitimate market research.

The BBC even reported comments from the ICO that "The ICO has consistently made clear that the promotion of a political party counts as marketing.

"We have previously issued detailed guidance to all major political parties on this subject."

Perhaps even more telling, in the light of the recent Ofcom statement allowing messages not for marketing content, he also added:

"Many people find unsolicited automated calls particularly intrusive and annoying so it is important that any organisation making such calls ensures that individuals have given their consent before they are targeted."

You can see the press release here and the full enforcement notice here.

Good on the Info Comm for coming to such a quick judgment. Hopefully this will be a lesson to anyone else considering such a stunt. Automated outbound messages are so cheap and easy to do that they will become a complete menace unless kept in check. Anybody in any doubt should watch the Simpsons episode "Lisa's Date with Density" where Homer buys a second hand auto-dialler to call the fine folk of Springfield to try and get them to give him money. It may not be much of a lesson in Privacy Law, but it's very funny.

Automated Calling Gets Political

Being at Call Centre Expo where a big talking point was the new Ofcom guidelines and their prohibition of automated calling for marketing purposes, the news that the Liberal Democrats were planning to make a quarter of a million automated calls could have knocked most people there down with a feather.

The Lib-Dems, the party which campaigned vociferously against calls made by other political parties at the last general election, are claiming that the calls are not covered by the Ofcom Statement because they are "market research" not "marketing".

I think that there are two key questions here.

The first is that of whether this is a genuine market research call or not. Selling under the Guise of Market Research (or SUGGing ) is an often-used ploy by people wanting either to start a conversation with a consumer under false pretences, or to get around the "Do Not Call" regulations which mean that people registered on the Telephone Preference Service are not immune from receiving Market Research Calls.

I didn't receive one, but the media reports said that they were going to be from Nick Clegg with a 30 second message from him before launching into the touch-tone interview. That in itself is clearly promotion of the Liberal Democrats' aims. The Ofcom Statement published last week has a very interesting section defining a marketing call. In paragraph 4.5 it states:

"The concept of direct marketing that the 2003 Regulations rely on is very broad and applies not just to the advertisement of goods and services but also to the promotion of an organisation's aims and ideals. It therefore applies to political and charitable, in addition to commercial, organisations. However there may be types of unsolicited recorded messages sent by automated calling systems that cause annoyance or inconvenience but which, for whatever reason, fall outside the 2003 Regulations."

(The bits in bold are the relevant bits here).

Given also that the calls were announced in the context of the party conference and the leaders' speech, even if the calls were to pass the strict criteria for Market Research, they would appear to be part of a promotional or marketing campaign.

The second question is that of whether automated calls should be allowed in the context of market research. Personally, I have a big problem with automated outbound calling. It is so cheap to do that there could be so much of it as to make your phone almost unusable. Ofcom in its statement is also concerned that the abuse of automated calling systems will be watched carefully. I can not find anywhere any explicit guidance in the Ofcom Statement for market research and automated calling, and I think it will be interesting to see what the Information Commissioner and Ofcom rule in this case.

One thing is clear - people who use automated calling have a fantastic opportunity to seriously damage their brands. They can do that to a lot of people very quickly.

I think this story will run and run...