As more and more “traditional” brands seek greater ROI for their broadcast investments, they are turning to the DRTV format (short format and long, infomercial format) as a way to both drive demand and build their brand.

If you're considering doing so, or just appreciate a reminder of how to ensure your DRTV spots are successful, here is a top 10 list of key success factors to keep in mind when developing, producing and placing DRTV campaigns:

1. Understand your target - Use a profile of your best customers to drive your targeting and messaging strategy.
2. Strong offers (incentives to respond NOW) are crucial - Next to the accuracy of reaching your target, having a unique, relevant and compelling offer is critical.
3. Be sure to employ multiple, consistent response options - Make it easy for people to call, click or visit. Consistent placement of response types throughout the spot, from beginning to end will ensure optimized response.
4. Demonstrations work - The more people can “experience” offering benefits the better.
5. Long spots work better than short ones - Because you can provide greater demonstration of the product/service and longer spots allow for multiple calls to action.
6. Better with a brand umbrella - So you can focus on traffic building - DRTV spots that are supported by separate, brand building efforts will perform far better than trying to drive demand and build the brand in the same spot – you’ll tend to do neither as well as you might.
7. Cable and syndication stronger than network - The data here are overwhelming. You’ll generate lower CPAs due to lower CPMs and there is simply a boatload of evidence that shows that cable and syndication placements have generated better historical response rates.
8. Leverage the power of versioning - Track message and media effectiveness with unique phone numbers. Vanity URLs don’t work though (too bad)…ask people where and when they saw a spot if you drive them to the Web.
9. Make the experience seamless - From viewing the spot to responding to the offer to making a purchase…make it smooth throughout the brand experience.
10. Don’t over complicate the testing - Just because you can measure a bazillion things doesn’t mean you should.

Follow these ten tenets and you’ll be well on your way to developing high performing DRTV campaigns.

Posted by Ken Dec at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AT&T has decided that after many years and billions (yes that’s bllions with a B) building a hip, memorable wireless brand that putting the word "new" in front of initials that stand for American Telephone and Telegraph is a better option. Uggh. (American for a global business in this day and age? Telegraph? What?)

Well, these are the same people after all who, upon acquiring MediaOne (one of the best and potentially most powerful names ever for a potential consumer triple play offering of cable-phone-internet) chose to change the name of that company to AT&T Broadband. Double uggh.

And what about two HUGE investments in the Cingular brand – American Idol and the new iPhone from Apple?

I think this is a case where one of the world’s least hip brands (AT&T) may actually do harm to two very hot brands (Idol and Apple).

Even Apple can’t make AT&T cool. I’m sure Steve Jobs is thrilled with that exclusive deal Apple signed with Cing…oops AT&T for the iPhone.

So whats the rationale? Efficiency.

Given the breadth of AT&T’s business, some bright bulbs thought having a singular (pun intended) wireless brand out there was inefficient from a marketing spend perspective. But this decision sacrifices effectiveness for efficiency and demonstrates a decided lack of honesty about its own brand.

AT&T is a badly tarnished, two economies ago brand with a horrific customer service reputation (both on the business and consumer side) that may not be quite beyond repair…but why repair when you could leverage?

I’d have argued for revolution. Lose AT&T as a brand and brand the whole thing as Cingular. Or if that’s too difficult for the old timers at AT&T, keep the holding company name and stock ticker, but brand as Cingular.

Branding as Cingular says current, future thinking, engaged in the world.

The decision to brand a AT&T says “we’re looking backward, to recapture lost glory, to show that we really are cool”.

Posted by Ken Dec at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Call me “geeky” (I’ve been called worse, today in fact) but I think a book published last year by Wharton School Publishing entitled Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master by Paul W. Farris, Neil T. Bendle, Phillip E. Pfeifer, and David J. Reibstein should be required reading by anyone calling themselves a marketer.

This book does a superb job distilling all the chatter about marketing measurement into understandable and, even more importantly, “actionable” guidance for marketers from the neophyte to the analytic type.

It strikes an excellent balance between what I’d call “finance light” – its heavier accounting and finance than many marketers have dealt are – but its past time we got better at this, with marketing decision-making guidance based on the results of those financial measurements.

Its textbook in nature (what would you expect, its from Wharton!) so its not a cover-to-cover read but something you can refer to again and again.

Here’s how I’d approach using it. I’d start by reading these chapters:

Measuring share: hearts, minds, and markets
Probing the hidden dynamics behind “market share”

Understanding profitability better than ever before
Accurately quantifying the profitability of products, customers, channels, and more

Advertising and promotion metrics, in detail
From promotional lift and price waterfalls to the latest Web metrics

Linking marketing to enterprise financial metrics
Understanding your true return on marketing investment–and enhancing it

Then take what you’ve learned and apply it! You can refer to other sections as you might need them.

There is much rhetoric out there about measurement…this book is a great guide that can help move beyond the rhetoric to real application of actionable measurement of your marketing programs.

Posted by Ken Dec at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a general rule of thumb the more complex the technology and the more expensive the investment, the more players that are involved in the decision making process.  Not many companies empower one person (or even department) with exclusive decision and purchasing authority.

What does this mean for marketers who are trying to influence this long and complex decision?  First, you need to understand the people involved in the decision and each of their roles’ in the process.  Talk to your sales team, talk to your customers, utilize syndicated research (Marketing Sherpa’s Business Technology Marketing Benchmark is a great resource), sponsor a brief survey…find out what your up against, find out what makes them tick. 

For example:

• Senior staff may be charged with the brunt of the groundwork – researching the solutions available to solve their problem.  How do the solutions interact with legacy systems?  These folks may be more impressed with the technology than others.  They want to understand how your solution will improve their life (and I don’t mean personal life)…

• The CIO on the other hand, will be more concerned with how the solution advances the business goals of the organization.  Marketing Sherpa notes that in many cases they’ve seen the CIO come in at the last minute and often overrules a senior staffers recommendation.

Once you understand who they are, then you can develop targeted communications that address each of their individual needs.  This can mean slight tweaks in messaging as well as the offer.  Test and refine, test and refine.

Increasing awareness across all individuals involved in the decision making process (combined with a solid solution) will increase your sales. Try encouraging dialogue between the involved parties – incorporate refer a colleague functionality in to your communications.  Give the decision makers and influencers something to talk about.

And test and refine, test and refine.

Posted by Kara Tierney at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fascinating article in the March 2nd edition of The New York Times that featured an interview with John Fleming, Chief Merchandising Officer and Stephen Quinn, the new Chief Marketing Officer at Wal-Mart that detailed the retailer’s new strategy to segment its 200 million customers into three segments that would drive its strategy:

• Brand Aspirationals – People with low incomes who are obsessed with brand names

• Price-sensitive Affluents – Wealthier shoppers who love deals

• Value-price Shoppers – People who like low prices and can’t afford much more

If Wal-Mart has finally seen the segmentation light, recognizing that growth is driven by focus, what are you waiting for?

A proven approach to segmentation is SegmentBrandingTM , an approach we use to combine behavioral segmentation with attitudinal segmentation along with predictive modeling that helps clients develop actionable segments that allow them to predict, with high levels of confidence, which segments should be invested in and at what levels to drive measurable, targeted ROI.

Here’s a simplified version of how Segment BrandingTM works:

Behavioral Segmentation – Perform a deep dive on your customer transaction data to segment customers on what they’ve actually done…what purchases they’ve made with you. Organize customers into segments of current value.

Predictive Modeling – Develop models that help predict what future value (revenue and profits) you can realize from each segment.

Attitudinal – Qualitatively understand the “why of buy” – to learn why your customers do business with you, and why do they do business with your competitors. Use your brand tracking study and other qualitative techniques (ethnography, cultural assessments, etc.) to segment customers into attitudinal groups.

By combining these behavioral, attitudinal and predictive analysis, you can exercise “differential investment” strategies – investing the right resources against the right segments in the right way at the right time and voila! ROI!

A word to the wise here. Segments must be actionable – so keep the number of segments small, five or fewer is advisable. Remember, even Wal-Mart, with 200 million customers is focused on three.

If the world’s largest “mass merchant” chooses segmentation strategy to drive its growth strategy, so can you.

So what are you waiting for?

Posted by Ken Dec at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When you go out to the movies, do you go to watch advertising? Do you go to learn about diseases? Or do you go to be entertained? I’ve loved going to the movies since I was a kid, but the experience has really gone downhill over the years with the high costs of tickets and snacks, and fewer and fewer films that are worth paying to see.

The short ads that play before movies begin can be entertaining, as they often fill the time when people are still getting popcorn or finding seats.  But in the near future, if you visit theatres in select cities, you will be able to experience a 58 minute long pharmaceutical ad/disease awareness documentary.

While Innerstate is a highly produced documentary providing a window into three real stories of people suffering from different immune diseases, and it is being offered FREE for anyone interested, I have to say NO THANK YOU!

Disease awareness and patient education campaigns are extremely important for the health of our nation, but TV, web and direct mail already provide excellent opportunities for communication with consumers.

To make a really strong campaign for this new documentary, I suggest a well-developed multi-media campaign:

• Offer the documentary as a DVD that people can receive via mail, and view in their homes.  

• Run broadcast and print ads that promote the film and drive people to a Website where they can request the DVD. 

• Hit a wider audience overall, and capture a highly targeted audience via DVD requests.

• Capture customer data and develop a customer marketing database (including opt-in details, don’t forget HIPAA)  

• Follow up with a series of emails or other DM to encourage people to visit their doctor and ask about an appropriate treatment.

Pharmaceutical advertising and disease awareness has its place – and it is NOT in movie theatres.

Posted by Ed Feather at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)