Direct Marketing Sells by Disrupting

A popular branding and marketing strategy blog draws conclusions about how direct marketing is the anti-brand strategy.

Some of the blog participants believe that branders seek the consumer’s trust above all. Direct marketers, on the other hand, have no such motivation. They are not interested in people, but numbers.

Numerous respondents to this brand oriented post essentially agree that direct marketers make sales by interrupting and disrupting people’s lives.

How would you respond to these statements? Are there elements of truth here?