British press giants – including the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Times – have been accused of mass hypocrisy after claiming Kate Middleton’s parents “exploit” customers of the Party Pieces family business by selling their data for £20,000 a time.
According to reports, the 230,000-strong customer file is sold for £120 per 1,000 names through the broker Fig Tree DM.
But like all media companies, the Mail, Telegraph and Times run huge direct marketing operations themselves, offering their own reader data to third-party advertisers. The Telegraph Group pioneered the use of database marketing as far back as the late Nineties; News International soon followed suit, and Daily Mail owner Associated has been using direct marketing for years.
As one data industry source said: “For some reason the journalists on these newspapers seem to think ‘direct marketing’ is somehow grubby. Yet without it, their commercial operations would be stuffed, and they would be out on the ear. This is just hypocrisy on a mass scale.”
A report in the Mail appears obsessed with how much the Middletons are spending from what it describes as this “lucrative sideline”.
The article states: “Mr and Mrs Middleton have said they will foot part of the bill for the April 29 wedding, which is expected to cost more than £10m. Their successful small-scale firm operates from a warehouse near their £1m home in the village of Bucklebury, Berkshire. The couple are thought to have taken £20,000 family holidays in the Caribbean and spent £780,000 in cash on a flat in Chelsea for Kate in 2002”.
But the industry insider warned: “If the Middletons are relying on revenue from data sales to fund the Royal wedding, Kate and Wills could be in for a very barren affair. Given current prices, this so-called lucrative sideline will just about stretch to a few sausage rolls and a handful of vol-au-vents…”
