E-Mail & SMS:  How viable are these streams of communication for DR?
You open your e-mail and delete a few unwanted attempts at marketing.  You check your latest text message – yet another unwanted appeal for you to purchase something.  Perhaps we react this way because we know the marketing tactics too well.  As the articles linked below reveal, our reaction is not necessarily that of the public we speak to every day.  In a world with new streams of communication being developed regularly it’s nice to know they work and are yet one more way we can reach our audience and drive results for our clients.
SMS Marketing Hampered By Consumer’s Footing The Bill For Ad?
Email most popular direct response method

Integrating Marketing – How well is it working?

Multiple touch points, multiple channels, multiple media….all mean the same thing…integration.  Any agency worth its weight is moving towards an integrated approach with their campaigns.  As shown in the results from The Weather Channel’s Interactive mobile campaign – this is the right tactic to employ in today’s marketplace.
Integrated campaign sets records for The Weather Channel

Still trying to reach Generation Y?
While it may seem like a mystery, Generation Y, as with all previous generations should be researched and approached in the ways which speak to them.  It’s about segmentation, personalization and how you position yourself to this audience.  Al Reis said is best, “The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different.  But to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind. To retie the connections that already exist.”  Penned in 1980 this thought still rings true today.  Click the link below for important insights into this savvy generation yet remember basic principles of marketing and do your homework to know your audience.
How to reach Generation Y

Going Green with your DR

Concerned about the environment and how much you’re mailing?   Look to the US Postal Service and the DMA for some great tips to reduce your impact on our world.

USPS Green Ideas

DMA Green 15 Toolkit

Willing to look at it from another point of view?  For the flip side of this coin, consider words from a recent Non-Profit Times article – as the title says, For Non-Profits, It Ain’t Easy Being Green.

Ana Brors, Senior Account Executive

Michelle Cardinal, CEO

Don’t get me wrong, I love to buy and shop both at work and outside of the office but the last several quarters have been like waiting for the elusive sale to happen so you can pick up that pair of Seven jeans you’ve been wanting at half their normal cost.  – Everything has to fall exactly in place in order to find a great deal like that.

Luckily for us since June the marketplace has really opened up – with general advertisers pulling back due to economic conditions and the mortgage/credit industry re-evaluating itself there has been a huge opening for DR advertisers to step in and take advantage of some great deals.  It’s like a back to school sale!

In the last couple of months the short-form department has received some fantastic opportunities offered to us at super low rates – NBA finals on ABC, primetime on USA and SciFi, early fringe on TNT, ABC primetime avails, NBC Nightly News and Olympic coverage on DirecTV as well as on NBC Network. – These are just a few examples the list goes on.  - Nordstrom Rack anyone?

Much like going crazy at a sale in your favorite store the buyers have been piling up their email inboxes with plenty of avails and snatching them all up for our various clients – this is the type of buying that makes the job so rewarding.  It’s so exciting to see these deals that you’ve worked hard on negotiating and developing come to fruition.

In a year that everyone thought would be very difficult for DR due to political spending and Olympic coverage we are actually seeing a very open marketplace and our clients are reaping the benefits of that.  Almost all of our national cable and local broadcast stations are willing to work with us in terms of rate and inventory is available and continuing to clear at very aggressive rates.

Marketplace conditions have allowed us to get a lot of testing in for our clients.   We’ve been able to introduce them to things they wouldn’t try or normally wouldn’t be available to them.

It’s difficult to say what will happen in Q4 – a lot will depend on overall economic conditions and the election coverage but in the meantime the buying team will continue to enjoy our daily shopping in the open marketplace.

Susan Rupert | Director of Short Form Media

In the good old days of infomercials, we saw giant hits with million dollar weekly budgets that performed at 5 to 1 media ratios. Media buying was truly like a feeding frenzy and everything seemed to work! Even the most junior buyer could achieve off the charts results and everyday seemed like a party for media agencies. Boy things have changed since the turn of the century.

Measuring infomercial success is today’s biggest challenge for marketers and agencies. The days of a junior media buyer placing a show on the air and achieving 5 to 1 media ratios are over. Success is still very achievable for today’s infomercial marketers but more work is definitely required. Today’s media buyers have to be savvy and much more educated about the current conditions of the media world. But media buying is only part of the equation that leads to success. Things like offer configuration and back-end management are now essential to the success of an infomercial campaign.

I challenge anyone who has trouble sleeping or likes getting up early on the weekend to tell me that infomercials will be extinct any time soon. The landscape remains strong with more infomercials than ever competing for time on local broadcast stations and national cable networks. Yes, the DVR will become more prevalent in the coming years, and this will continue to alter the viewing habits of the American consumer, but channel surfers like me will always exist in households across the country.  As long as I am here, infomercials will continue to be a large part of the advertising landscape.

-Mike Hallowell, Long Form Media Director

One of my greatest college professors always kept us on our toes because at any moment he would call on one of us out to explain to the class what he just illustrated on the board.  After seeing fellow classmates go through a couple displays of complete embarrassment, the entire class would be at the edge of their seat holding on to every word that came out of his mouth.   It is sometimes tempting to incorporate this tactic into our internal training just for fun, but due to the amount of strategies and advertising vehicles a new account executive has to digest, asking questions has now become second nature.

From what I had to learn as an account executive is now completely different than what our new account executives need to learn today.  Client Service team members need to become experts in all product categories and across all advertising vehicles.  They need to be able to fully explain strategies for television, print, radio, direct mail, and online advertising.  They also need to explain how each of those vehicles will be integrated to maximize results.

In today’s economy, Direct Response advertisers need to be truly diversified to take advantage of seasonality trends and to capture all potential consumers that may purchase their product.  They can not just rely on one adverting source, but a combination of several.  Now, the only question left to ask is… “Why?”

Frank Burrell, Director of Client Services, R2C Group

Because it’s what we do every day, sometimes the process that our media analytics team performs are taken for granted.  But the technology and human resources employed to provide reliable reporting to our clients are highly impressive.

The media sourcing and tracking systems we have in place bring timely clarity to the performance of our clients’ media. Here’s what’s involved:

• Pre-logs, which list tentative air dates and time for our clients’ commercials, are obtained from the networks and stations, and are entered into our proprietary tracking system.

• By cross-referencing the pre-logs with the call reports from call centers, we estimate airing occurrences on a daily basis, and the consumer calls and leads are sourced to each individual airing appropriately, so as to provide clients with up-to-date information on how much media has cleared and the performance of each network and program. This function is essential to make quick decisions about adjustments to media schedules, and provides buyers the data they need to renegotiate their schedules on a daily and weekly basis.

• Post-logs are entered into our proprietary tracking system the week following when the media has run.   Post-logs are requested, received and entered on a weekly basis and results are re-posted for further analysis by our buyers, giving clients the most accurate assessment possible of its media clearance/performance.

• Cmedia refreshes its tracking / lead maturation information for every call each day.  For some clients, this means hundreds of thousands of calls on a daily basis are re-sourced in order to refresh the current state of the lead data in relation to our media.  This approach allows the client to see how a call or lead matures over time, helping us understand the true value of the lead.

• The time, human resources, and technology costs necessary for these processes are significant, but we invest in each because clients depend on the accuracy of our reporting to help them make the right business decisions.

It is essential to have a media system that will enable our team to pull efficient, accurate reports so that our clients can understand how their media is performing by network/program, creative and rotation.
Our proprietary and advanced technology and the customized programming we provide on a regular basis is state of the art and cannot replicated in an off the shelf media management software, and our full-time programming staff is constantly updating and enhancing our system for our clients’ benefit.  .

Dave Savage, EVP/Managing Partner

The Advertising Research Foundation, American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers and the Magazine Publishers of America have all spent a lot of time in recent months wrestling with the definition of “engagement,” Madison Avenue’s latest buzzword.

In fact, the 4A’s and the ARF are working together to define and then measure “engagement” across a variety of media. Their project name is worthy of a Tom Cruise summer movie sequel: “MI4,” or “Measurement Initiative: Advertisers, Agencies, Media and Researchers.”

This is all well and good, but a better acronym might be “MIA.” What’s missing exactly? Accountability.

At a recent industry meeting, Joe Plummer, ARF’s chief research officer, was quoted as saying, “We’re not sure about engagement as a currency,” but the reports indicate that he and other industry leaders are firmly committed to further exploration and discussion.

Add that to the fact that Nielsen recently informed clients that it has released incorrect data for months on “length of tune,” reportedly a surrogate measurement of “engagement” for some marketers, agencies and broadcasters, well, ya got trouble my friends, right there in New York City.

Despite our industry’s leaders’ best intentions, something has seriously gone wrong when we’re reduced to talking about “engaging” consumers instead of selling to them, and the problem can be traced back to a few decades ago.

Beginning in the 1970s, our nation’s top marketers started spending horrific amounts of money on creative, and then swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the bloated science of reach, frequency, awareness and recall.

Madison Avenue agencies told clients “the more bizarre your advertising, the more you’ll stand out,” and the more you stand out, the more product you’ll sell. For years, marketers bought this pitch, and the money stream from corporate boardrooms to Manhattan advertising agencies flowed unabated.

But a funny thing happened in the ’90s. With the rise of the Internet, agencies tried to apply the same wrongheaded science and measurement tools for their clients’ Web marketing that they had used in the television world. It didn’t work.

But years later, when agencies finally started applying tried and true direct response principles to the Web, the numbers started making sense and the cream began to rise to the top.

Marketers are increasingly aware that they are not getting their dollars’ worth from Madison Avenue. More and more, marketers are getting wise to the super agencies’ inability to deliver measurable results for all the money being spent on TV creative and media.

As a result, the institutional infrastructure the agency world built up over the years to defend mammoth budgets and expense accounts is now scrambling to come up with new measurement tools to further justify their existence.

You need look no further than the MPA’s recently published guide to engagement, entitled “Engagement: Understanding Consumers’ Relationships with Media,” which has been distributed at industry conferences recently. It analyzes scores of media studies around ‘engagement’ and one of the many conclusions reached is startling:

“Higher levels of consumer engagement appear to correlate with stronger advertising results.” Stop the presses. Does the study really suggest that when consumers pay attention to advertising, it generally means that product sales increase?

What marketers need, and what smart marketers are finding, is that there are agencies delivering compelling, cost-effective advertising and sales results that are measurable on a daily and even hourly basis.

But creating cost-effective campaigns that deliver effective ROI isn’t necessarily easy. It requires smart creative and smart media strategy. Creative must be designed to educate and compel, as opposed to simply attract and brand. Media rates continue to increase even though viewership is fractured, so media must be bought and analyzed based on rates and response, not simply reach and frequency.

Major brands have taken notice how start-ups and much smaller operations have used direct response to build enormous businesses. Tremendous entrepreneurial brands such as Proactiv Solution, Bare Escentuals Cosmetics, Oxiclean and Total Gym, to name a few, were all built through direct response television, and they all grew because their managers cared about true measurability from the earliest stages of their marketing efforts.

It is because marketers are increasingly in need of accountability and measurability that direct response strategies are more commonly being employed. Advertisers such as P&G, Philips, AOL, The Home Depot and Sony BMG are increasing their direct response television spending because they are looking for marketing solutions that deliver real valuations for their advertising, and that don’t necessarily rely on ineffective measurement models.

Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with all the Madison Avenue talk about “engagement” with consumers. But like a bride-to-be who nervously awaits her wedding day, marketers simply want to close the sale and have their consumer bridegroom simply say “I do” today, instead of believing in the promise that they’ll finally commit some time in the not too distant future.

Despite my and many other experts’ best counsel and efforts, a large percentage of the Fortune 500 has difficulty implementing direct strategies. Perhaps it involves the heritage of direct versus the necessary entrenched bureaucracy of most mega-corporations.

Direct is all about scrappy, efficient marketing, salesmanship, testing to success and measurement based on performance. Conversely, the traditional agency world has convinced corporate America that advertising is really about exposure ratings, obscure and often unintelligible creative genius and, hopefully, a Super Bowl spot.

OK, perhaps it is professional suicide to write a column that mentions “client” and “stupid” in the same sentence. But I am continually disturbed that many great companies that could use direct as a valuable part of their ad and marketing mix make the same mistakes.

Here are a few of the most common “stupid client tricks”:

Let the brand agency manage the direct campaign. This is akin to having Jennifer Aniston manage Angelina Jolie’s career. Brand agencies not only don’t understand how direct works, but by their nature they are opposed to it on multiple levels.

Failing to identify and stick to clear objectives for the campaign. Direct is all about measurement: What is the goal, and how will we identify and measure success? Corporations often shift objectives so quickly that it is difficult to establish and stick to one goal. Many clients enter the industry with no clear vision of what they want to achieve, and thus never know whether they are successful.

The consultant conundrum. Companies new to the industry often seek the assistance of consultants. While there are a few experts who can be of great assistance, many of the so-called direct experts have not been active in the business for years, or have limited hands-on experience. Direct is incredibly dynamic and changes on a monthly basis, so if your consultant’s credentials are mostly more than a year old, the consultant is probably out of touch with the industry.

It is common to claim unjustified credit for successes. If you elect to use a consultant, check them out in-depth to ensure they are current in the industry and that their stated credentials are real. Ensure you know how they are compensated. A consultant that takes “referral fees” from vendors might not have your best interests at heart. If you choose the right agency, chances are that you won’t need a consultant.

Use brand research to make direct decisions. Clients frequently want to fall back to their brand research to make creative and strategic decisions regarding their direct efforts. Though product and demographic research can help in constructing offers and the product pitch, it is largely useless as a predictor of success in direct. A focus group environment does not equate to grabbing a consumer and enticing her to buy. There is no replacement for live testing.

Back-end mismanagement. Proper telemarketing, Web, customer service management and fast and accurate reporting from all response channels are essential to a campaign. Yet many clients insist on using their in-house resources, which typically cannot handle the spikes and peculiarities of direct. The agency needs fast, accurate response data to optimize media. Without it, you waste money.

Analysis paralysis. I often see appropriate products for direct fail because of corporate bureaucracy. Sometimes they are even successful during the test but never roll out due to internal issues. Direct is a fast-paced marketing channel that involves testing and changing to optimize the campaign. If your corporate structure does not allow for a bit of internal entrepreneurship, then the format might be inappropriate for your company.

Spending based on budget - not results. The beauty of direct is in the immediate response data. When successful marketers hit goals, they keep spending as long as they stay within the ROI target. They never establish fixed budgets that would be too much if they were unsuccessful and too little if they have a hit.

Working with the right resources and heeding your direct agency’s advice ensures that a client doesn’t make the mistakes listed above. The power of direct is its accountability, and when properly set up and orchestrated everyone is incentivized to make the client successful.

What was it they said? Oh, yeah, “You guys came up with fantastic creative and production–the spots look great! And you really nailed the brand messaging,” as if they’re surprised that we were able to come up with work that was on par with their brand agency.

Unfortunately, many brand companies exploring direct response as a viable element of their marketing mix probably are hanging on to some old, stereotyped images of DR that have reached the level of parody: yelling and selling steak knives, and telling viewers for the umpteenth time to “hurry and act now& but wait, there’s more!”

These perceptions have barely been discouraged by the company’s brand agencies that have traditionally looked down upon direct response as marketing’s version of a carney barker. Do a little Googling and you’ll easily dig up their rants against the DR industry in trade articles, blogs and interviews.

PLAYING IN OUR SANDBOX
It’s funny how some of those same brand agencies are now even recommending direct response as a viable element of a campaign. Ironically, some have even tried their own DR hats on for size by simply pitching an 800 number or a URL.

My agency has created direct response campaigns for global corporations that have strategically built their brand to a level where it is a sacred thing: a Ming vase of trust, commitment, goodwill, fulfillment and service they have nurtured and grown over the lifetime of the product, the service or the organization.

Some clients approach DR agencies a bit warily at first. In our case, we are presented with reams of PowerPoint decks a hundred times thicker than the creative brief driving the campaign, meticulously defining their brand in terms of its tone, voice, color, emotion, personality, heritage and graphic-style parameters. We immerse ourselves in all of this before we even begin conceptualizing the campaign.

After the campaign is up and running, these clients will often approach us somewhat apologetically. They’ll say, “when we started working with you, we were apprehensive about the level of creative and production value not being on par with the work of our brand agency.” We’ve even had clients admit that the work we’ve done for them is more brand-centric than what they’re getting from their agency of record.

That’s fine. DR agencies will keep winning over corporate CMOs campaign-by-campaign. It’s because these specialized firms produce campaigns that look great, are consistent with brand–and sell. Oh, and by the way, DR agencies will also tell you that your spot ran yesterday on such-and-such network and generated this many leads and converted this many sales–let’s see a traditional brand campaign do that!