This month more than 5 million pieces of 'direct mail' will be sent to the deceased, according to propaganda commissioned by Millennium ADMP Ltd. It's therefore important that marketers buy the Mortascreen deceased suppression file from Millennium ADMP Ltd.

I don't think marketers will ever grow tired from commissioning junk research. Marketing is about manipulating, and presenting banal marketing exercises as 'scientific research' has unfortunately become a standard trick in the marketer's repertoire. Sadly, it works. Even though Millennium's research is 100% unverifiable there are plenty of marketing publications that have copied the company's self-congratulatory press release almost word-for-word.

Anyway, I'm jumping to conclusions; you're probably dying to know more about Millennium ADMP Ltd and deceased suppression files…

As I understand it Millennium is the company behind the Deceased Preference Service; one of two companies that produce these magical deceased suppression files. Put simply, Millennium collects the names and addresses of people who have died and sells these details to junk mailers so that they can remove people who have died from their mailing databases. Millenium's suppression file is called Mortascreen. It's competitor is the Bereavement Register (run by the Read Group Plc).

Selling dead people's personal details is Big Business and there's an increasingly fierce competition in the market for deceased suppression files. Only a couple of weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority dealt with a complaint from the Bereavement Register against Millennium. An advert for Mortascreen had claimed that the suppression file is larger, more up to date and more reliable than any other suppression file. The claim could – surprise, surprise – not be substantiated and so the Bereavement Register's complaint was upheld. It was a welcome victory for the Bereavement Register as Millennium had won a similar complaint against the Bereavement Register only two weeks earlier. An advert for the Bereavement Register had claimed that it was the market leader for fast accurate deceased suppression data – another claim based on the flimsiest of evidence.

We can conclude, then, that neither Millennium nor the Bereavement Register are likely to be nominated for the 2010 Honest Marketing Award. And I reckon it's also justified to be more than just a little bit skeptical about Millennium's unverifiable research. Really, it stinks like an egg sandwich. You'd expect Millennium would have gathered by now that it shouldn't make claims that can't be substantiated, yet the only sensible thing we can say about the company's research is that it can't substantiated. To put it more bluntly: the study is cheap marketing masquerading as scientific research. The only reason why Millennium commissioned the 'study' is so that the company could urge junk mailers to buy its Mortascreen suppression file.

As mentioned, there's nothing new about this. In fact, Mortascreen is only copying the example of the Bereavement Register, which has been insulting science for many years with its claim that 80 pieces of 'direct mail' are sent to people who have died in the first twelve months following death. It was only while writing an article about junk mail and the deceased for the Guide to Stamping Out Junk Mail that something struck me about the latter statistic. If it's true that the average person is sent 80 pieces of addressed junk mail in the first year following death then dead people actually receive more addressed junk mail then people who are still alive. When I contacted the Bereavement Register about this they readily admitted that the calculation had been done on the back of an envelope. To be fair to the Bereavement Register, they had taken into account various variables, such as the fact that elderly people (who make up the bulk of the deceased) are sent more junk mail than other age groups. Nevertheless, the statistic is rubbish.

Why do the Bereavement Register and Millennium exaggerate the amount of addressed junk mail that is being sent to the deceased? One explanation is that they got a commercial incentive to do so. Marketers are more likely to spend money on deceased suppression files if they perceive junk mail sent to the deceased as a serious problem. Another, more favourable explanation is that the Bereavement Register and Millennium feel so passionate about stopping junk mail sent to the deceased that they tell little porky-pies to further their cause. The latter would be an unwise but understandable marketing strategy. Every junk mailer should make a real effort to prevent its advertisements are sent to people who have died, and anything that encourages them to 'clean' their mailing databases should be welcomed.

I suspect it's mainly money that drives both companies. The dodgy marketing techniques used by Millennium and the Bereavement Register are rather sinister. To the general public they market themselves as some sort of charities helping to reduce junk mail sent to deceased loved ones but behind the scenes things aren't so hunky-dory. There's a lot of money in trading dead people's personal details, or so it seems, and both companies are quite aggressive in their quest for a greater share of the deceased market. Sadly, it's very difficult to see how all this competition benefits the 'consumer'. I mean, the Bereavement Register and Deceased Preference Service both claim to collect the details of 95% of all deceased people. You'd expect that their efforts would at least half the amount of addressed junk mail sent to deceased. Yet, their own figures suggest that they don't come anywhere near this.

Wouldn't it be better to stop treating the personal details of dead people as a commodity and set up a system that actually works? Make it a legal obligation for junk mailers to use deceased suppression files and fund the system by introducing a small levy on each and every piece of addressed junk mail and you got the whole problem of junk mail sent to the deceased sorted…