Media: A Moment with Marquis.

Of all the media, direct marketing has - without question - the most highly developed propensity for own goals. Which is both mad and inexcusable, when you think about it. This, after all, is the growing and successful route to market that identifies individuals rather than groups. This is the medium that can lay legitimate claim to precision, to knowing not just who we are but what we like, how we behave, what we buy. It is, uniquely, the medium that learns more about its audience as campaigns progress.

So I found myself in complete agreement with the opening sentence of an e-mail - unsolicited, as it happens - from Abachi, the self-proclaimed 'leading marketing agency'. It said: 'Most direct marketing neglects its intended readers' psychological disposition. Often intrusive, it arrives at the wrong time.'

It certainly does. Even a message about messages arriving at the wrong time can arrive at the wrong time, and while you are fighting to keep on top of the daily e-mail deluge is definitely the wrong time.

But the thing that ensured this particular communication failed spectacularly with me was its wanton 'neglect of its intended reader's' (in this case, my) 'psychological disposition'. Whatever did it do, you may ask, to have me fulminating thus? It addressed me as ...