Are you having trouble with your database? Would you like to talk about it? If so, call Jock Bickert, the industry's first database psychologist.

This isn't a joke. Bickert, the founder of National Demographics & Lifestyles, its list division The Lifestyle Selector, and the Cohorts system, started out as a clinical psychologist.

That doesn't mean he will psychoanalyze your database, but he does want to help you understand your customers, using the combined tools of market research and database management.

Bickert, who left Cohorts' operator The Looking Glass several months ago, now hopes to serve as a consultant “with no corporate constraints.”

He is well positioned for his new role. Prior to starting database marketing firm NDL, which linked questionnaires with warranty cards, he worked in the survey business, exploring both attitudes and behavior. He found out, though, that “there is not much interaction between direct marketers and the conventional market search industry.”

One problem was the difference in sample sizes. Market researchers often asked Bickert, “Why have a database of 1.5 million people when you can do it with 1,500?”

But Bickert has always seen a need for a link between the two disciplines. For example, attitudinal research could help DMers understand why some consumers don't respond to direct marketing. “What do we know about them?” he asks.

“Everyone at one point is a direct mail virgin,” he continues. But some never order by mail.

“It's not because they are unaware of brands,” Bickert says. “But there are a number of people who never had the experience, or it was so minor it didn't register with them. Or they did have it and it didn't meet their expectations.”

He added that the industry should commission “a sophisticated study of the phenomenon,” analyzing individual market segments.

Is your business too small to get involved in such big questions? Then Jock is also available to help you get your database on track, or to help you deal with the privacy issue.

Bickert became sensitive to privacy matters while working in the research field. “Those surveys were conducted in the home, and they took three or four hours.” Consumers' privacy had to be respected or “they wouldn't let you in the door.”

One more thing: Jock's one-man firm (which really goes by the name Data Psychologist) is located in Denver.