Doc Searls, one of the authors of the Cluetrain Mainfesto (excellent book), blew it yesterday in his blog post. In it, he writes of the need of “real” advertising to exorcise the influence of Direct Marketing. It’s direct response, you see, that has polluted modern advertising with incessant, intrusive and privacy-damaging pitches that ruin the Internet experience.

He actually wasn’t talking about direct response marketing, but rather the appearance of direct response marketing as practiced by today’s ill-trained dilettantes. I’ll reiterate here what I wrote in response to Mr. Searls. Those of us who follow and learned from the lessons taught to us by Lester Wunderman, David Ogilvy, Gordon Grossman, Gene Cullinan and many others are not the problem.

The problem lies with the quick-buck artists who are happy to sell their company to Google for $100 million, and who will let Google worry about the wake they’ve left. Real direct response marketers are not the problem here.

My response to Mr. Searls is in the comments to his blog post.