ABSTRACT
Leading the charge is the direct-marketing industry—notably, direct mail and telemarketing. This chapter looks at the cutting edge of intrusive marketing: video ads in waiting rooms and other public spaces. Direct marketers compile information from a wide array of sources, then collect and trade the data like baseball cards. The rise of telemarketing parallels the increasing clutter of traditional advertising media. The intrusiveness of telemarketing violates what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called, in his landmark 1890 definition of privacy, the "general right of an individual to be let alone." The union of advertising and telecommunications has produced a mutant offspring: the 900-number industry. In minority neighborhoods around the country, citizens armed with rollers and paint buckets are fighting back against exploitative billboard ads. Direct marketers eschew the mass media, preferring the intimacy of a personalized letter or telephone call.
