A strange compulsion grips Swedish households each summer. Two weeks before the latest Ikea catalogue is due to arrive, the Swedes rip off their “No junk mail” letter-box stickers — and once the Ikea lists of plywood tables and flatpack beds are safely delivered, they put them back again. It is, according to Robert Keitch, a sign of how sensitive consumers have become to the tide of unwanted mailshots.

As the new head of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), Mr Keitch has the unenviable task of protecting the rights of junk-mailers, whose ranks include most big retailers as well as agencies operating on their behalf. Privacy concerns, those ever more canny consumers and attacks from green groups angry about a rising mountain of waste paper have each made his job more difficult, even before taking into account the ravages of recession.

Yet with the economy in turmoil, Mr Keitch is trying to convince companies that, despite apparent growing public antipathy, direct marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to keep the tills ringing. “What you have to remember is that one man’s junk is another man’s valuable offer,” he said, “but for it to be effective, what is needed is for us to be more precise about how we go about it. To think ‘let’s just bang out a million leaflets’ is not justifiable any more.”

In 2008, 4.3 billion items of direct mail were sent to consumers, according to Postcomm, the postal regulator. There were 12.2 billion “e-shots”, or direct marketing e-mails. According to the latest industry figures, British organistions spent a total of £50.5 billion on direct marketing in 2007 and sales attributed to direct marketing activity totalled £133.4 billion.

Although post is still the industry’s biggest money-spinner, Mr Keitch’s eyes light up when he speaks of new technologies, such as mobile phones and e-mail, and the shot in the arm that they have given to direct mailing. Yet if the ability to blitz potential customers on their phones and by e-mail offers an exciting new opportunity to Mr Keitch and his DMA members — all 900 of them — many consumers complain that this has simply created more ways in which they can be pounded with irritating, unwelcome business pitches.

To some, the industry, with its lists of people and details about their lifestyles — the locations of one-child families in Luton or of car-owning dog-lovers in London — seems downright sinister. Recent cases in which personal data has been lost by businesses and government departments have heightened suspicion about the practices involved.

Mr Keitch promises that all the information on his members’ databases has been gained legally, such as via promotions on packaging. Yet one of the main concerns about the industry is consumers’ ignorance about the point of agreement. Many fail to realise that leaving a box unticked on a form will lead to hundreds of unwanted brochures landing on their doormat.

To try to keep consumers onside, the industry has launched several “opt-out” services in recent years, by which people can ensure that they are not targeted with advertisements. About 17 million people have signed up to the telephone “preference service” alone.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Keitch is no fan. “It is a comfort for people knowing they can opt out if they want to, but it is a very blunt axe,” he said. “If two or three things that come through your door are not really your bag, why opt out of everything?”

Nor has Mr Keitch much sympathy for worry about data security. “A good chunk of the concern is irrational,” he said. “Because someone knows your shopping habits, that will not lead to a fraud. Consumers today are much more marketing-literate than they were 20 years ago. Most people realise today that they do leave an information trail behind them and they use it to their advantage — just look at the success of the Tesco Clubcard.”

Meanwhile, new ways to blitz the public with offers are emerging. Among the most exciting, Mr Keitch believes, are location-based services, by which offers can be put to consumers on their mobile phones while they are shopping. “You’ll be able,” he said, “to use your phone to scan a barcode and check their product price against the price in other stores.”

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