I was at a symposium here in Seattle earlier this year, and one of my peers asked me if we were nervous about the convergence of TV and Internet. She was asking if we felt like our existence as an agency was in danger. She seemed surprised at my answer: We’re embracing the convergence with open arms I told her, for now, we’ll REALLY be able to measure individual web sales to individual airings, which, right now is the #1 issue facing DRTV marketers. There are many agencies and consultants that claim to have algorithms and attribution models that can come close to attributing individual web orders to station airings, but nobody has it perfectly clean like the call centers do. They use unique 800#s for each airing, providing an easy attribution model for marketers. One of our current clients, set a new record for our agency last year, with more than 80% of their orders coming from the web versus the phone. You see the problem.  With convergence, the problem is solved and we’ll be able to measure a clickstream through to the sale, and provide a true picture of ROI.

In DRTV, we always test offers to measure which on the consumer prefers. With convergence, we’ll be able to significantly compress that feedback loop by providing multiple offers to consumers in real time, and garnering that data immediately. Gone will be the old method of testing one offer for two weeks, then testing another for another two weeks. We’ll be able to show both offers to the consumer on their screen, then ask them which one they prefer, let them choose, and we’ll know right away. Love it.

T. O’Brien

As the auctioneer yells “Sold!” all three look at each other with utter confusion and anger – including the eventual winner. Why the long faces? Together, they wanted to buy the car as a cheap 16^th birthday gift for their baby sister. Instead they competed against each other and paid entirely too much for a piece of, to put it nicely, junk. There was no collective game plan.

In a race to find the lowest media rates, marketers in today’s direct response world are finding themselves in a similar situation: They have been sending three men to do a one-man job, hoping the hungriest would scavenge around and do whatever needs to be done to find the best and cheapest media.

This method has not been very effective. In fact, it has driven prices in the wrong direction – up.

Over the past few years television advertising pricing has soared to new highs. Why? It’s a simple rule of supply and demand. If three companies want the same time slot (whether it is for the same client or not), then that time slot is put on the auction block for the highest bidder.

It’s obvious why media outlets are supporting such a competitive, animalistic environment. As Rick Petry mentioned in last month’s Electronic Retailer Magazine, sellers support the manufactured competition for their inventories because it drives up rates and ultimately increases their revenues.

But why are companies and entrepreneurs sitting idly sidelines as their agencies take a costly beating out on the media playing field? Agencies and the marketers are supposed to be on the same team.

Petry says a good chunk of the problem is distrust. Why would a marketer trust one player when he could field a whole team of agencies? It’s a valid point. Putting too many dollars in the hand of one agency can be detrimental in B2B, but there is another word that balances out distrust in this business – loyalty.

Most DR ad agencies are extremely loyal. They have no reason not to act in the best interest of the marketer. If an ad agency finds inexpensive, well-placed time slots then the marketer is likely to spend more dollars with the agency in the future, increasing revenues on both sides while leaving the expensive artificial competition out of the game.

Here is one thing any good company engaging a DR company should know: There needs to be a high level of loyalty, understanding, and trust between sellers, agencies and marketers. Ask the veterans of this business. Ask Rick Petry. Choose a good agency and let it go fight for you, not against you.

The DVR market has grown quickly over the past 12 years. According to Jupiter Media, 35 percent of American homes will have some form of DVR by the start of 2012. Considering that the average American household has two-three persons, the total number of viewers with the ability to dictate what they watch, and when they watch it is intimidating large (U.S. Census Bureau).

However, people aren’t recording every show. In fact, most studies show that Americans only record around 10 percent of the programming they watch on a daily basis. That means that 90 percent of television in the U.S. is being watched live and not taped.

Now, that might not exactly be the best news for agencies trying to promote products because it decreases the number of potential viewers, but it’s not the end of the world. Why?

Because only 60 percent of Americans with a DVR say that they fast-forward through recorded commercials. It’s true! How often do you go to the movie theater and want to skip the previews? The same goes for an eye-catching ad even if you own a DVR remote.

Consumers, by nature, are curious and want to see what is for sale. They take the time to hear a well-prepared pitch when the opportunity arises.

Direct Response advertisements, like the ones we make here at Cesari Direct, reach just as many viewers as ever. DVR presents a miniscule threat of a 6 percent viewership loss during an era when TV viewership is at its highest point ever. Ad agencies, like us, shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. And for now, DVR is exactly that – small stuff.

So how do you not only cut through the clutter to be heard, but actually get people to buy what you’re selling?

Two words: Direct Response.

“INFOMERCIALS?” you ask. Yes. And no. While the 30 minute long format spot still is a wildly successful selling tool, direct response has evolved to include other formats like short form thirty second to two minute commercials, and, of course, websites. Indeed, any marketing that asks people to pick up the phone, go to the web, visit a retailer or even send a text message is a form of direct response.

In my experience, there’s no faster, more efficient, economical way to grab the consumer’s attention, engage them, and elicit a desired behavior:

1. Make a Big Impact on a Small Budget

When a packaged goods giant introduces a product, they can spend $10 million on advertising to try to create a brand. Many of the companies I’ve worked with didn’t have those kinds of ad budgets, or much of a budget at all. But using DR, these companies were able to build multi-million dollar brands from scratch.

When I began promoting the then unknown Juiceman Juicer back in the late eighties, sales were holding flat at around $500k. Then we shifted to a DRTV campaign that educated viewers on the health benefits of fresh juicing. Our call to action pitched free nationwide seminars where attendees could learn more and purchase a juicer. Sales skyrocketed from $500k to $75 million in 3 years and a national brand was born.

The genius of DR is that you’re motivating people to “Buy Now!’ while simultaneously building your brand. The revenue you amass from direct sales funds your ad budget.

Also, with DR, you can buy ad time 30-40% cheaper than conventional ad time. So you can create a big impact with smaller ad dollars. This past Superbowl, we ran TV spots for GoPro Camera. Most people assume that’s a one to two million dollar buy, but we spent a fraction of that to place DR spots locally in important large markets. Folks in LA, New York, Seattle and Houston saw GoPro’s Superbowl commercials–which gave the brand a major boost–and no one knew they weren’t million dollar Doritos ads.

2. Let People Vote with their Pocketbooks

Another benefit of direct response is that you get instant feedback on how the creative worked. While brand ads merely try to make an imprint or be humorous, DR always asks the viewer to take some sort of action. There’s no way to prove if brand ads are working. But with DR, you have an absolute mathematical, spreadsheetable, PNL-able way of saying, “This is what you spent. This is what you sold.” When consumers respond, you can see it in the sales spike. And when they don’t, you can keep tweaking the creative until you get the numbers you need for a successful campaign.

Direct is also a great way to build up sales volume and demand. When I began working with OxiClean, they couldn’t get retail grocery store shelf space. But using DR, we got direct sales, which fueled the media, creating more awareness and demand. A year later, retailers were calling them, asking, “How can I get OxiClean in my store?”

Often, once you’ve created enough awareness to get shelf space, retail sales explode, and you’ve hit the ground running.

3. Speak To Consumers and They Will Respond

With the fracturing of media, it’s gotten infinitely harder to reach consumers through advertising’s traditional “shot gun” approach. It’s no longer enough to just shout your message to the masses and hope someone hears you. DR instead allows you to take advantage of the power of direct demographic marketing.

In DR, we look at all of the consumers a brand or product might appeal to, research, then tailor the message and media to each different group. You keep the same brand images and messaging, but solve a different problem that’s important to each consumer type, and use targeted media buying to reach those individual demographics. This way, you’re talking directly to each viewer about something that interests them.

That’s the real secret behind all good marketing. To engage consumers, you have to stand next to them and find out what their needs are. In direct response, we go one step farther, and walk people through a solution. When we do it right, consumers respond.

And, when they do, we know about it right away.

The fact is today, as viewers we are overburdened with marketing messages, up to 40,000 per week. Yet as a species we are always hunting or gathering new goods, ideas and services. We are unrelenting consumers and at the same time we are shrewd, jaded and scrutiny filled television producers. We filter through the thousands of messages to find what is appropriate for us to actually stop, listen and “hear” a voice that is truthfully speaking to us. One of the main things we are forced to look for is a sense of verisimilitude or the idea that moves us closer to the “truth.” It has become the first filter, the absolute first filter if we are to consider a purchase. Think about how you listen to TV…..BS….BS…..BS….BS….oh wait that last one might be true, let me look a little closer.

Here’s a quick example that’s on the air in the brand world. Beyonce Knowles advertising deep rich colorful hair tint in a box for about ten bucks. Good for Loreal, but as a viewer-producer do you really think her hair coloring came out of a ten dollar box? No way. I want to see the reality video Jay –Z shot with her with her head in the laundry sink rinsing as two Yorkshire terriers raise hell in the back round.. Sure she is beautiful, and yes she sells product but what if it was done in a truthful way? Could you sell more? I don’t care, keep the glamorous after shots but prove to me that $20,000 weave is being dipped in number 18 gold and I’m in, so is your customer. Madison Avenue is still missing what the direct response people are doing….getting a little closer to the truth every day. Raw sells.

At Cesari Direct, we have a number of strategies that we routinely engage to indicate the truth is being told and garner higher belief in concept by the viewer. Some of them are so obvious they never strike some producers and creative directors. First, tell the truth. Sounds simple, but the fact is, if you stick to the real story of your product and do not embellish its performance, you will most likely help not only your initial sales but garner candid positive dialogue on the web, in social media, on review sites like Epinions. This discussion and scrutiny can create real traction for your product. Secondly, don’t hire or ‘fix’ testimonials, give the product to real people and get their sincere take on it. To this end, if possible rely on candid “man on the street” testimonials whenever possible. This leads to the third point, allow them to be truly candid. If the testimonial says something critical about the product, don’t necessarily throw that comment out. A valid normal testimonial will have some objections, if you give a shadow of that doubt while still casting light on your product the viewer will often disregard the negative and remember the positive. It takes some intestinal fortitude to do this but it is worth it in the long run. If your product does not lend itself to “man on the street” but is a product that takes time to appreciate. Go buy a fist full of “Flip” cameras. You can spend fifteen to thirty thousand bucks in a day shooting testimonials or hand out 20 flip camera’s and get not only great testimonials but reality b-roll of your customers using your product. Suddenly you look like you are telling the truth, because you are. User self shot video is some of the most compelling stuff you can hope for as a producer. We rely on it all the time. Forget the people that tell you it looks like crap….It’s supposed to, that’s what makes it real. One last tip, in any studio segment you shoot include mistakes in your edit. Your editor will shudder and fight you on it, but do it. A rough camera move, a soft focus that racks clear, a dropped prop or a fumbled line and reaction are fine…that’s actually the stuff that makes shopping channels sell. It just feels real.

Ron Lynch
Creative Director

When Ron Lynch returned to Cesari Direct a few years ago, I promised myself to block the time to chronicle some of the most important and compelling stories in my twenty-five years in the direct response industry and ask Ron to contribute his remarkable insights as well. The goal was not to impress upon readers that “we’ve seen it all,” rather to explain some of the methods we used in successful campaigns so that our experiences might benefit other marketers, inventors and entrepreneurs.

Buy Now: Creative Marketing that Gets Customers to Respond to You and Your Product (John Wiley & Sons) will officially debut in the next few days. It is a compilation of material I’ve wanted to produce for decades. Ron and I are extremely pleased with the content and look of the final product. It includes some home runs, absolute disasters, creative characters, gutsy decisions and the variety of roads traveled to get there. Perhaps this information will show others that they don’t have to reinvent the marketing wheel to be successful – and that direct response fits nicely in the center of any marketing wheel.

A successful campaign feeds off itself, yet always with the benefit of personal touch and passion. I always had intended to write about Max and Elaine Appel’s first steps toward expansion, moves that took them from their family garage to Orange Glo sales of more than $300,000 per month. Buy Now includes our inside view of Max, OxiClean and the late Billy Mays.

The best spokesperson for a product is the person who has used the product and genuinely believes that consumers can benefit by using it. The magic is getting the spokesperson to convey the “believability” to an audience. George Foreman’s pleasure in food was well established. The idea that this former heavyweight champion boxer might be getting to “that” stage in life where it became important to get interested in healthy cooking made him credible on the subject. Buy Now details some of the hilarious scenes we encountered while reshaping a bulky taco maker into The George Foreman Grill.

How do you convince consumers that a $150 toothbrush will truly lead to a healthier lifestyle? Buy Now explores how accurate information combating gum disease led to an overwhelming acceptance of the Sonicare Toothbrush.

There’s a lot of fun and memories packed in to the book.We hope our experiences might guide you through a few difficult decisions toward a successful campaign. If you pick up just one helpful hint from our years in direct response, then we’ve met our goal. We’d be honored to hear your opinions, comments and concerns.

Thanks to all!

Rick Cesari

As an industry, we are just beginning to realize what we don’t know about web attribution and the options to confidently change decisions based on this data, let’s be honest with each other and admit, no one has this completely figured out yet. See below for some of the mental gymnastics we use to help guide our web attribution modeling.

Our First Step – Market – In order to isolate where web orders should be attributed, you must identify the DMA (Designated Market Area) that produced them. This is done by taking the zip code of the web order and mapping it to the DMA. This is the most critical step in the process and the only one that you can view with near 100% confidence if done correctly. With media companies also mapping spend to Markets – here is an opportunity to see the impact of media spend on web performance.

Our Second Step – Local vs. National – Each Local station is within only one DMA, so you can isolate the possible local stations that produced the order. For National media this is more difficult. In order to be accurate, you must consider all National stations since they cover all DMA’s. The decision here is – how will you split the orders between Local & National? 50/50? 70/30? Based on spend? Based on calls/orders/dollars from telemarketing?

Our Third Step – Time Window – You must also determine what range of time you will use. You can go to the most recent national or local spot and attribute all orders. This is the easiest to accomplish but is also another area you will lose confidence in the outcome. What if you have 3 national spots at $10,000 each running at the same time? This model will attribute all orders to one station and make it look much better than the others. Any other window of time can be chosen but adds tremendous complexity – 4 hours back, 3 days, 14 days? There could be 50 spots that meet these criteria. Do people respond faster on the web to free trials, hard offers, price points under $50, over $50? How about at different times of the day, week or year?

So, do you have it figured out yet? Me neither – but with the application of technology, analytics and the brainpower of our industry I know we will continue to make progress.

So what’s next? How about retail attribution models – they are more similar than you might think. Stay tuned…

Tim O’Brien
VP of Business Development

R. Cesari

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Tim O’Brien