September 09, 2005

DRTV Gets Its Due

Direct Response TV advertising (DRTV) seems to be the fastest growing segment in TV Land. Sales are up 25 percent during the first half of 2005 to $1.2 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a growth rate double that of cable TV. Sellers are reporting 100 percent renewal rates from DRTV advertisers like J&J, Pfizer, Orbitz and L’Oreal. Packaged goods and financial services advertisers who long disdained DRTV are now embracing it.

My...how things have changed.

Not too long ago DRTV was the late night and weekend province of the Ab Roller, Hooked on Phonics and Ron Popeil. It was, if you believed the white shoe ad guys, a sleazy neighborhood frequented by brands on the deathwatch, jobbers with leftover inventory and small time entrepreneurs running boiler room operations in search of quick and dirty wins.

Fast forward to a time of tight budgets, fragmented viewing, integrated marketing and creative executions that can simultaneously promote the brand and carry a call to action. Presto! The ugly duckling becomes a swan.

DRTV can be branded and responsive. DRTV is carefully tracked to yield a clear ROI. And DRTV at 40 percent of the cost of upfront or scatter inventory is still bought creatively to finesse network issues and zero-in on target audiences. DRTV reinforces brand awareness. DRTV drives phone calls. DRTV drives web traffic. DRTV provokes search engine queries.

DRTV has always done these things. This is nothing new to those of us who have toiled “below the line.” We can all enjoy a brief “I-told-you-so” moment, bask in the recognition for a previous undervalued media channel and savor a back-handed compliment for all those savvy media people who have mastered the nuances of DRTV.

Sep 9, 2005 10:25:00 PM | Media

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Seifert's Ethics Sideshow As part of her sentence for defrauding the government former Ogilvy and TBWA executive Shona Seifert was required, by US District Court judge Richard Berman, to write a Code of Ethics for the advertising industry. The judge evidently thought we, as an industry, were down a quart. The 18 page document written by Ms. Seifert and filed with the court on August 31st is an odd duck that has spawned some interesting commentary and controversy. Anyone looking for a set of rules or anything approaching a handbook will be disappointed. Instead Ms. Seifert addresses her “Proposed Code of Ethics for the Advertising Industry” to “frontliners everywhere.” Her first words, “None of us ever plans to be thrown under a bus” make it clear that in addition to a few gratuitous rules, our girl Shona is out to prove that she was the sacrificial lamb; that she took one for the team. If you doubt my interpretation, consider her fifth line, “If you are a frontliner you are more likely to find yourself in the line of fire. And it may be better for others that you take a bullet.” To which she adds in hindsight, “Don’t compromise your own values to achieve someone else’s goals.” Nah. Nobody in the ad game ever does that. This is a funny sentence and a funny response to it. The language is elliptical, filled with clichés and obvious imperatives. For example she writes “Don’t take a government contract if your agency is not well versed in the regulations.” This and many other Business 101 statements make me cringe. I wonder if her PowerPoint decks and her client memos were as ponderous and as vacuous. On the basis of the writing alone, I’d sentence her to prison. Ogilvy and Shona did what most agencies do. They have the most junior players keep records using rudimentary systems. Then they ask senior people to continually project workflow, estimate revenues and cover the number of hours worked at target margins. Shona and her team held record keeping as a low priority and when necessary to protect their jobs and their bonuses manipulated the data to make their numbers. Unfortunately they messed around with the government, who cares more about accounting than creative. Shona makes my point by discussing the importance of big ideas and brilliant work versus bookkeeping. She advises her peers that “boring work has never resulted in a prison sentence. Poor timekeeping practices have.” Consider us warned. I hope the judge is lenient with her. This is a mealy-mouthed apologia that dances around the issues, has all the weight of a Hallmark card and attempts to position Ms. Seifert as less than the felon she is.
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Positioning PR for Maximum Results I am amazed at how much business people expect from public relations. But I suspect that the overblown expectations which usually follow from the injunction “let’s get some PR on this” have more to do with tight budgets than realistic marketing strategy. PR is an incredibly competitive sport. Each day thousands of story ideas compete for space and time in hundreds of trusted media outlets. The best PR people know how to frame the story, how to craft the pitch and exactly who to talk to. And even the best practitioners have to compete with wars, hurricanes, elections, coups, Wall Street, Congress, court decisions and other stories considered competitive hard news topics by the dominant media which can easily shift the news agenda and overturn all previous plans or promises. PR, as opposed to advertising, carries the implied third party endorsement of the medium in which it appears. Most people, even skeptical, media savvy people, believe that “If the Times prints it, it must be true.” And yet this added credibility is never as strong as a paid call to action. Another aspect is the trade-off between endorsement and editorial control. In a typical PR placement, an editor or a producer makes a decision on what to say, how to say it, how much or who to include and what to exclude. In fact, as a point of pride and to illustrate the distinction between editorial and advertising, it is rare for newspapers or TV stations to print or air prices or contact information. As a result, people reading or viewing a story about an event, a concert, a performer or a product are much less likely to pick up the phone, type in a URL or initiate a Google search than those who see an ad asking them explicitly to take these actions. Marketers fantasizing that a PR campaign by itself will sell out a theater, empty a warehouse or drive traffic to 800 numbers or websites are kidding themselves. PR, like brand advertising, builds awareness, creates a buzz and begins the demand generation process. But rarely will PR alone play the role of direct response advertising. If you don’t target your most likely audience and communicate with them directly by making an offer, you are wasting your PR effort. PR combined with well placed; controlled messages with clear calls to action are a “best practices” formula for success. Anything less is wishful thinking.

Danny Flamberg

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