Media Perspective: Media agencies are still failing to give DM strategy its due.

It's a strange feeling knowing when you're going to die. According to the Death Test, courtesy of www.okcupid.com/death, I'll be buying the farm in November 2054, aged 81. Apparently, cancer is most likely to get me, but I have a 2 per cent chance of dying from a fatal wound.

Some days it seems like 2054 can't come soon enough. Like when putting together the 'strategy of the week' section for Campaign. The end result might be worth it, but getting agencies to part with their finest work is on a par with extracting a WMD from Iraq.

But these frustrations aside, the major thing you notice with most media plans and strategies is the lack of a direct marketing element. Fair enough, you might argue, the direct mail is usually planned and bought by specialist direct agencies. But surely the media agency should at least be aware that it exists?

On one of the larger campaigns featured in the section, it seemed there just had to be a direct element, even if the media planners weren't involved.

A quick call to the media planner and a firm no, there's no direct. A quick call to the DM agency and it turns out there's a significant direct campaign, closely linked to the brand campaign and timed to work on the back of it. This pathetic lack of communications could hamper a whole campaign. Especially when a bunch of agencies and a client have proudly, and publicly, declared how closely they'll be ...