Creating broadcast advertising

Chapter outline
 Radio commercials
 Television commercials
 Other TV and film advertising
 The creative team
 Broadcast copywriting
 Television art direction
 Planning the execution
 Broadcast production
 Web advertising

Chapter objectives
When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to
1. Describe the characteristics and tools of radio commercials
2. Explain the elements and message characteristics of television commercials
3. List other TV and message forms that use broadcast techniques
4. Discuss the roles of creative team and explain the duties of a broadcast copywriter
and art director
5. Identify the critical steps in planning and producing broadcast commercials
6. Summarize how businesses use the web to advertise

RADIO COMMERCIALS
Imagine you are writing a musical play. This particular play will be performed before
audiences whose eyes are closed. You have all the theatrical tools of casting, voices, sound
effects, and music but no visuals. Imagine having to create all the visual elements – the
scene, cast, the costumes, the facial expressions – in the imagination of your audience.
Could you do it?

This is how radio works. It is an entertainment medium. Listeners sing along with the
radio, laugh at its jokes, and wipe away a tear when a touching message hits an emotional
button. In that sense, it is a theater of the mind. The story is created in the imagination of
the listener and listeners are active participants in the construction of the message. How
the characters look and where the scene is set come from their personal experience. Radio
is the most personal of all mass media. The Radio Advertising Bureau has used the slogan “I
saw in the radio” to illustrate the power of personal involvement. Research indicates that
the use of imaginary in radio advertising leads to high levels of attention and more positive
general attitudes toward the ad and its claims.
Message characteristics of radio

In an analysis of the history and evolution of radio. Professor Sally McMillan noted that in
the early 1920’s, when radio was a new medium, it is portrayed as a way to deliver
education, information, and entertainment. By the late 1920’s, however, education and
information were secondary to entertainment.

Because of this entertainment function, radio is the medium that relies most heavily on the
special talents of the copywriter. Production budgets tend to be low. There is no need to
choose type styles or layout formats. In radio, you are alone in your imagination.

Radio has some unique characteristics that make it challenging medium for advertisers.
The most intimate of all media, radio functions as a good friend, particularly for teenagers,
and appeals to their special musical interests. However, although radio is pervasive, it is
seldom the listener’s center of attention and because radio is a transitory medium, the
ability of the listener to remember facts (such as the name of the advertiser, addresses, and
phone numbers) is difficult.

Tools

Radio copywriters use three primary tools to develop messages: voice, music, and sound
effects. Audio producers can manipulate these tools to create a variety of effects.

Voice

Voice is probably the most important element. Voices are heard in jingles, spoken dialogue,
and announcements. Most commercials have an announcer, if not as the central voice, at
least at the closing to wrap up the product identification. Dialogue uses character voices to
convey an image of the speaker: a child, an old man, and executive, a Little League baseball
player, or an opera singer. The absence of pictures demands that the voices you choose
help listeners see the characters in your commercial.

Music

Music is another important radio element. Research indicates that radio is more persuasive
than celebrity endorsements, product demons, or hidden-camera techniques. It falls just a
little under kids, kittens or puppy dogs. It’s not only persuasive; it is also very memorable
because we remember information when we sing along with it.
Jingle houses are companies that specialize in writing and producing commercial music,
catchy songs about a product that carry the theme and product identification. A custom-
made jingle-one that is created for a single advertiser-can cost $10,000 or more. In
contrast, many jingle houses create syndicate jungles made up of a piece of music that can
applied to different lyrics and sold to several different advertisers in different markets
around the country for as little as $1,000 or $2,000.

Music can also used behind the dialogue to create mood and establish the setting. Any
mood, from that of a circus to that of a candle-lit dinner, can be conveyed through music.
Advertisers can have one composed for a commercial or can borrow it from a previously
recorded song. Numerous music libraries sell stock music that is not copyrighted. The
drawback to using stock music is the chance that other ads will use the same music.

Sound effects

The sound of seagulls and the crash of waves, the clicking of typewriter keys, the cheers of
fans at a stadium all create images in our minds and cue the setting, as well as the action.
Sound effects can be original, but more often they are taken from records. As with anything
else, restraint is a good rule with sound effects. Use only those you need unless the genuine
purpose is to bombard the listeners with sounds.

Television commercials

Effective television commercials can achieve audience acceptance if they are well done, and
they can minimize viewers patterns of avoidance if they are intriguing as well as intrusive.
The Best Of Show Awards for the 1998, One Show, for example, was a 30-second campaign
for Volkswagen in Britain featuring humorous commercials built around the low piece of
the VW Polo. Fallon McElligott’s Bob Barrie, who is president of the One Club, explained
that it was possibly the quietest, the simplest TV spot entered in the show. A woman sits at
her kitchen table. She slowly reads her morning newspaper, hiccupping. Her ailment is
relieved by a subtly surprising VW Polo and with its “surprisingly ordinary” price.

Most people pay more attention to television than they do radio programming. People
watching a program they enjoy often are absorbed in it. Their absorption is only slightly
less than that experienced by people watching a movie in a darkened theater. Advertising is
often considered an unwelcome interruption because it interrupts program viewing.

Another problem television advertiser confront is the tendency of viewers to switch

channels called zapping, or leave the room during commercial breaks. Because of television
viewer’s strong patterns of commercial avoidance, commercials have to be intriguing,
intrusive and likable.

Elements

The television is audiovisual medium. The two main elements used to create messages that
are intriguing and intrusive are the video and the audio.

Video

The visual dominates message perception in television, so the creative team uses the visual
as the main way to deliver the concept. The video elements include everything seen on the
screen. Copywriters use visual and motion the silent speech of film, to convey as much of
the message as possible. Emotion is expressed in facial expressions, gestures and other
body language.

Because television is theatrical, many of the elements, such as characters, costumes, sets,
and locations, props, lighting, optical and computerized special effects, and on-screen
graphics, are similar to those you would use in play, television show, or movie. Because of
the number or video and audio element, a television commercial is the most complex of all
advertising forms.

In the “Da Da Da” commercial (the commercial’s real name is Sunday Afternoon but it is
more commonly referred to by the nonsense lyrics of its theme song), the two stars are
seen driving aimlessly around L.A. in a red VW Golf. The driver makes faces in the rear view
mirror and his side kick plays with an odd springy puppet and tires out a couple of judo
hand moves. The primary prop is an old, faded green recliner that the actors spot discarded
on the side of the street. They stop and contemplate the chair gag is selling feature in
disguise: It demonstrates the car roominess. After driving a bit, they begin to smell a foul
odor coming from their trophy, so they can dump their treasure back on the curbside.

Audio

The three audio elements of television, as in radio, are music, voices, and sound effects, but
they are used differently in television commercials because they are connected to a visual
image. For example, an announcer may speak directly to the viewer or engage in a dialogue
with another person, who may or may not on the camera. A common manipulation of the
camera-announcer relationship is the voice-over, in which the announcer who is not visible
describes some kind of action on the screen. Sometimes a voice is heard off camera, which
means it is coming from either side, from behind, or form above.

Sometimes there’s no voice at all, as in the VW Sunday Afternoon commercial. Pafenbach

explains his strategy in reaching the ad-verse young audience. It is better to say less and do
less and let people fill in the blanks. The annoyingly infectious spot uses an obscure 1982
song by the now defunct German group trio to accompany the aimless meandering of a pair
of 20-somethings. Ad because they are both guys, they say nothing. It is a guy thing,
Pafenbach explains, guys can sit for hours and not speak, which drives women crazy. And
then at the very end, the announcer delivers the perfect Gen X tagline: the German
engineered Golf. It fits your life. Or your complete lack thereof.

Music is also important in most commercials. Sometimes it is just used as a background,

other times the song is the focus of the commercial. In Da Da Da the pleasantly monotonous
song was chosen deliberately to reinforce the notion of going nowhere. Creative art
director Lance Jansen was the one who remembered the weird little tune from college.
Pafebach comments that Lance is a repository for musical trivia like this. The ability to
remember and use unusual information is a characteristic of creative people.

Message Characteristics of Television

Television is a visual medium, but so are newspapers and magazines. So what makes the
difference in impact between television and print visuals.

Action

It is the moving image, the action, that makes television so much more mesmerizing than
print. When you watch television you are watching a walking, talking, moving world that
gives the illusion of being here-dimensional. Good television advertising uses the effect of
action and motion to attract attention and sustain interest. In the Sunday Afternoon
commercial the car is seen driving through an unattractive urban landscape moving across
the screen first to the right and then to the left, demonstrating visually the idea of aimless
wandering.

Emotion

More than any other advertising medium, television has the ability to touch the feelings of
the viewer makes television commercials entertaining, diverting, amusing, and absorbing.
Real-life situations with all their humor, anger, fear, pride, jealousy, and love come alive on
the screen. Humor, in particular, works well on television. These emotions are pulled from
natural situations that everyone can identify with. Hallmark has produced some tear-
jerking commercials about the times or our lives that we remember by the cards we get
and save. Kodak and Polaroid have used a similar strategy for precious moments that are
remembered in photographs.

Demonstration

Seeing is believing. If you have a strong sales message that lends itself to demonstration,
then television is the ideal medium of the message. The chair gag in the “Da Da Da”
commercial was a subtle soft sell demonstration that showed that a recliner could fit in the
back of a VW Golf. Believably and credibility – the essence of persuasion – are high because
we believe what we see with our own eyes.

Cross-cultural commercials

American advertising strategies commercial formats may not play as well in other
countries. An example comes from Russia, where the Snickers brand name has become a
swear word. When the communist group wants to insult the United States, it bombards the
embassy with Snickers, and when an ultranationalist politician wants to score points with
supporters, he berates, Snickers bars that Slavic stomachs refuse to digest. The reason is
because Mars in its haste to dominate the Russian candy bar market, used an aggressive
marketing blitz, so viewers who are unused to advertising of any kind saw the same rapid-
fire American commercials over and over. And the commercials used Americans faces
setting, a lot of English, and clumsy Russian translation.

The Russian backlash against the Mars commercials and the clumsy translations of product
slogans point to an important issue. Cultural pride is strong and advertisers need to fit their
commercials into the cultural milieu. In Malaysia, for example, the government requires all
that run on Malaysian television to produce in the country. That has created a boon for the
local television industry but it also guarantees that the commercials are more culturally
sensitive.

OTHER TV AND FILM ADVERTISING

The length of TV commercials first got shorter (10-15 seconds) as television time got more
expensive, then it got longer as advertisers discovered that longer commercials could be
used in certain inexpensive time slots. In particular, researchers were concerned that use
of shorter forms such as the 15-second commercial has lead to more confusion in terms of
remembering the main idea in advertising.
The type of video used in marketing communication is much broader than the familiar 30-
second commercial you see on television. Cinema also opens up a new opportunities for
commercial messages through movie trailers and product placements. Even video games
are being used for product placements.

Infomercials

Longer-format commercials, called infomercials, of 2-5 or even 30 minutes in length are

being used for messages that need more length in product categories where demonstration
and explanation are important. Fitness and health products have dominated the
infomercial arena. Upjohn’s Rogaine, the first prescription product to use infomercial, is
due to explain the complicated product to consumers and provide the supporting medical
information required by the Food and Drug Administration.

Lexus dealers have used infomercials to sell their inventory of reconditioned, used Lexus
cars as they come off lease. The goal is to generate leads for the local dealer as it presells
prospects also uses clips from its TV commercials to reinforce its upscale image.

Video

Video is also for product literature, news releases, direct marketing and training films. The
car industry has been using videos for years as product literature to give potential
customers to test drive on their television screens. The world of wildlife fund has sent
videos in its membership renewal kits and Du Pont used a video to tell farmers the complex
story of its Synchrony STS soybean seed/herbicide system.

In a neat piece of integration, WLIT-FM in Chicago used in 8 ½ minute video as a direct

response mailer to 250,000 local viewers. The video gave the station time to tell its story
and built a relationship with its listeners. Because Viacom owns both the station and
Blockbuster video, sister retailer Blockbuster also distributed the video for customers to
borrow free of charge. The station saw its Arbitron ratings jump from sixth to fourth place
in the market after views receive the mailing.

Movie Trailers

Most movie trailers accept filmed commercials to run before the feature. Called trailers,
these advertisements are similar to television commercials but are generally longer and
better produced. Trailer messages are usually 45 seconds, 1 minute or 2 minutes in length.
This gives more time for messages development than the typical 30 second television spot.
In 1999, over 100,000 fans paid $7.50 to view the 12 minute trailer for the Stra Wars
movie: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

There may be some limited targeting of these messages in terms of location and the type of
audience factor is the attention and concentration generated by the theater environment.
The projection of larger than life images in a darkened theater is totally unlike the
experience of watching television. The impact of larger screen makes for a compelling
image that commands total attention. And that of course, is the issue. Some people, who see
themselves as a captive audience, resent this form of advertising. Because of the potential
resistance and the context in which the message is shown, this type of advertising should
be highly entertaining.

Brand placements

When the little alien in the movie E.T. nibbled on Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces, it did more than
an incite a million little kids to call home. It established the somewhat forgotten candy as a
major rival to Mar’s M&M’s. on television, Seinfiled was particularly known for its highly
visible placement of variety of products, including Junior Mints, Pez candy, and Kenny
Rogers chicken. These products were an integral part of the typical high jinx in each
Seinfield episode.

Product placements are the inclusion of branded products, services, or brand identifiers
within the content of other pop culture programming, usually for some consideration by
the brand’s sponsors. Using brands and props in movies and TV programs states as a casual
process, with loaned or donated products used in scenes to enhance their believability. But
they also bring in the money, with placements costing in the neighborhood of $40,000 to
$50,000 for a simple exposure such as appearance on a shelf, use by a minor character, or a
verbal mention of the brand.

Professional agents that specialize in linking products to films and TV shows manage brand
placements. The exposure, similar to brand names on racing cars, brings high visibility to a
brand. Recent research shows that movie viewers interpret brand placements more
actively than do television viewers at home. Placements are effective if the viewer takes
information about brands from the program or film and interprets the brand according to
how it is used by a character or whether the placement position the brand as hero.

The Creative Team

A locally produced TV or radio commercial uses the stations’ personnel for most of the
production roles. Creating a national radio or TV commercial requires a number of people
with specialized skills. The agency crew usually includes the copywriter, art director, and
producer. The producer oversees the production for the agency and the client. The outside
people include a production house, a director, a shooting or recording crew, a talent
agency, composer, music arranger or director plus musicians and an editor. The client’s
advertising manager is also involved throughout the planning and production.
Broadcast copywriting

A print advertisement is created in two pieces: a copy sheet and a layout. Commercials are
planed with two similar documents. A script is the written version with all the words,
dialogues, lyrics, instructions and description. The storyboard, which is used in television
commercials and other videos, show the number of scenes, the composition of the shots,
and the progression of the action.

Radio Copywriting

Radio urges the copywriter to reach into the depths of imagination and cunning to create
an idea that rouses the inattentive listeners. Remember, radio is visual. However, the radio
messages is ephemeral- it is here one moment and gone the next. You cannot tune into the
middle of an ad and then go back to the headline as you can with the print. You can reread a
radio message. Radio forces the writer to write better, to revise, and to take more time with
his or her craft.

Writing successful copy for radio is a challenge. Radio broadcast specialist Peter Hochstein
of Ogilvy & Mather recommends that copywriters create vivid images in the minds of
listeners. To meet this challenge, he recommends that they follow these 10 guidelines:

 Identify your sound effects. Tell listeners what they’re hearing, and they’ll be more
likely to hear it.
 Use music as a sound effect.
 Build your commercial around a sound. Use the sound of the crisp new cracker, for
example, or thunder to represent the power of a solid bank account.
 Give yourself time. Fight for 60-second spots. It is often impossible to establish your
sound effects in 30 seconds and still relate them to product benefits.
 Consider using no sound effects. A distinctive voice or a powerful message
straightforwardly spoken can be more effective than noises from the tape library.
 Beware of comedy. It’s rare when you can sit down at your computer and match the
skill of the best comedians. However, well-written and relevant humor can be a
powerful advertising technique.
  If you insist on being funny, begin with an outrageous premise. Lake Michigan will
be drained of water and refilled with whipped cream. A man puts his wife’s
nightgown at 4 A.M. and goes out to buy Time magazine - and the cops catch him.
 Keep it simple. Radio is a wonderful medium for building brand awareness. It’s a
poor medium for registering long lists of copy points or making complex arguments.
What one thing is most important about your product?
 Tailor your commercial to time, place, and specific audience. If it is running in
Milwaukee, you can tailor it for Milwaukee. You can talk in the lingo of the people
who will be listening and to the time of day in which your commercial will be
broadcast. Talk about breakfast at the breakfast hour or offer a commuter taxi
service during rush hour.
 Present your commercial to your client on tape, if possible. Most radio scripts look
boring on paper. Acting, timing, vocal quirks, and sound effects make them come
alive.

The key to the success of radio advertising is to evoke visual images based on what the
listener hears. Writers creating ads for radio need to capitalize on its intimacy and the
imagination of the listener. Successful radio writers and producers have excellent
visualization skills and a great theatrical sense.

Anchoring the Message

Even though most people listen to radio with divided attention, strategist in radio
advertising use three tactics (see “Practical Tips #1”) to catch listeners’ attention and drive
the message into their memories: repetition, entertainment, entertainment, and relevance.
Ultimately, radio advertisers must intrude on the inattention of the listener yet not be so
intrusive as to anger the listener.

Conversational Style

Writing radio copy requires a particular style and certain tools. Radio copywriters write in
a conversational style using vernacular language. Spoken language is different from written
language. We talk in short sentences, often in sentence fragments and run-ons. We seldom
use complex sentences in speech. We use contractions that would drive an English teacher
crazy. Spoken language is not polished prose.
Word choice should reflect the speech of the target audience. Slang can be hard to
handle and sound phony, but copy that picks up the nuances of people’s speech sounds
natural. Each group has its own way of speaking, its own phrasing. Teenagers don’t talk like
8-years old or 80-years old. A good radio copywriter has an ear for the distinctive patterns
of speech that identify social groups.
Television Copywriting

Television is unlike radio or print in many ways; in the most important way, it is a medium
of moving images. And these images must be fused with the words to present not only
creative concepts, but also a story.
An effective television commercial fuses the radio and visual elements. One of the
strengths of television is its ability to reinforce verbal messages with visuals or visual
messages with verbal. “The idea behind a television commercial is unique in advertising….
The TV commercial consists of pictures that move to impart fact or evoke emotion and
selling words that are not read but heard. . . . The perfect combination of sight and sound
can be an extremely potent selling tool.”
The point of audiovisual fusion is that words and pictures must work together or
commercials will show one thing and say something else. Researchers have found that
people have trouble listening and watching at the same time unless the audio and visual
messages work together to develop the point. A Mountain Dew spot is a takeoff on a James
Bond adventure with 007 in grunge on snowboards and mountain bikes. The storyline is
reinforced by the Bond like music and the tagline, “Shaken, not stirred.

Storytelling

Stories can be riveting if they are well told, and television is our society’s masters
storyteller. Most of the programming on television is narrative. “Da Da Da” is a story even if
it is about doing nothing on a Sunday afternoon except driving around town. Commercial
stories must be imaginative to hold their own against the programming that surrounds
them.
Effective television advertisements use storytelling both to entertain and to make a
point. These little stories can be funny, warm, silly, or heart-rending, just as in real life.
Emotion is best developed and expressed in a narrative form. Slice-of-life advertising is
simply instruction in a soap opera format. How far should the storytelling elements go? “A
Matter of Principle” investigates that question.

TV Planning

Many questions must be answered in creating a television spot. How much product
information should there be in your commercial? Should the action be fast or slow? Is it
wise to defy tradition and do unusual ads that create controversy, like the “Da Da Da” spot,
which is, admittedly, about nothing? And is it a good idea. As Pafenbach and Jensen
decided, to use deliberate understatement and a minimalist message to advertise a car?
 Every producer and director will respond to these questions differently depending
on his or her personal preferences. Nevertheless, a few general principles corresponds to
all successful television commercials and they are summarized in “Practical Tips #2.”
In planning a television commercial, many considerations determine how the
commercial is built and its internal logic. Producers of commercials must plan how long the
commercial will be, what shots will appear in each scene, what the key visual will be, and
where and how to shoot the commercial. The considerations of length, scenes, key frames,
and execution are outlined next.

Length

The most common length for a TV commercial is 30 seconds. However, some network
commercials now run in 20-seconds and 15-second formats. Because of the increasing
costs of air time, 60-second commercials are becoming rare. An advertiser may buy a 30-
second spot and split it in half for two related products. If the two messages are
independent, such as a cake mix and a frosting mix, the strategy is called piggybacking.
Because some advertisers need longer segments of time, they purchase infomercial
time, usually 30 minutes late at night. However, some companies such as MCI, Healthrider,
and Volvo purchase 5-minute formats that can work into commercial breaks.

Scenes

A commercial is planned in scenes, segments of action that occur in a single location. With
in a scene there may be several shots from different angles. A 30-second commercial
usually is planned with four to six scenes, but a fast-paced commercial may have many
more. “Da Da Da” could be said to have 11 scenes if you count the inside and through-the-
window shots as well as the distance shots of the car. The commercial has 21 shots in the
60-second version, which isn’t a particular fast pace.

Key Frame

The television equivalent of a thumbnail sketch is called a key frame. Because television is
a visual medium, the message is developed from a key visual that contains the heart of the
concept. The various concepts are also copy-tested as key visuals. In the “Da Da Da”
commercial the key frame is the view through the passenger side window of the two guys
checking out the recliner, an image that has been copied in the various parodies of this
commercial.
Execution Elements

The audio and vision dimensions must be put into the right setting and surrounded by
appropriate props. The right talent must be chosen, and appropriate lighting and pacing
are critical, along with other elements. The creative decisions examined next specify the
other elements such as the setting, casting, costumes and makeup, props, and lighting. All
the decisions that are an important part of the message design must be described in the
script.
The setting is where the action takes place. It can be something in the studio, from a
simple tabletop to a constructed set that represents a storefront. Commercials shot outside
the studio are said to be filmed on location, as in the “Da Da Da” commercial, which used
the streets and freeways of L.A. as a backdrop. In these cases the entire crew and cast are
transported somewhere. The location could be an alley or a garage down the street, or it
could be some exotic place such as New Zealand.

A television commercial has all the ingredients of a play. The most important element is
people who are called talent, and finding the right person for each role is called castng.
People paly the following roles:
 Announcers (either onstage or offstage), presenters, introducers
 Spokespersons (or “spokesthings” – such as talking butter dishes)
 Character types (old woman, baby, skin diver, police officer)
 Celebrities, such as Shaquille O’Neil, who came to the NBA with a complete
marketing plan in hand outlining his endorsement strategy.

Television Art Direction

Art directors create the look of the commercial. They are concerned with the dominant
colors, the way the action moves through the scenes, the pacing, and the design of elements
seen in the image, such as furniture settings.
MTV commercials, for example, are highly stylized, and those video experiences have
generated some of the most exciting video designs to be seen anywhere on television. The
messages are filled with action, unexpected visuals, and imaginative special effects. And
they are copied endlessly in more mainstream commercials.

Art directors are also concerned with the graphic elements that appear on screen. Words
such as logos, and still photos are shot from a card or a computer-generated right on the
screen. A crawl is a computer-generated letters that appear to be moving across the bottom
of the screen. Stock footage is a previously recorded image, either video, still slides, or
moving film, used for scenes that aren’t accessible to normal shooting. Examples are shots
from a satellite or rocket, historical scenes such as World War II scenes or a car crash.
Computer Graphics

Sophisticated computer graphic systems, such as those used to create the Star Wars special
effects, have pioneered the making of film art on computers. In the new computer-
animated world, television images are changing dramatically. Computer graphics specialsit
use the Paint Box system to create and manipulate video images. As costs have decreased
and design technology has moved to personal computers, these systems are finding their
way into the art director’s office and they expand the graphic capabilities of the agency and
production houses fro both print and video.

Planning The Execution

The common lengths of commercials are 10,15,20,30 and 60 seconds. The 10-15, and 20-
second lengths are used for reminders and product station identification. The 60-second
spot is common in radio, although it has almost disappeared in television.

Scripting

As a rule, you can estimate that the two to three words a second is average for a well-paced
commercial, which means you can go as high as 90 words in a 30-second all-copy
commercial. If you write longer, chances are your speaker will have to rush through the
copy with little or no time for the pauses and special inflections that add color and
dimension to the spoken word.

Broadcast Production

Most local retail commercials are simple and inexpensive, and are shot and taped at the
local station or production facility. The sales representative for the station may work with
the advertiser to write the script, and the station’s director handles the taping of the
commercial. The process is more complex for nationally released commercials.
Commercials are produced in one two ways. They are either taped or duplicated for
distribution or they are recorded live.

Producing Radio Commercial

In the taped radio commercial, the radio producer is responsible for the commercial’s
casting, recording, mixing, and duplication. All the sound elements are recorded separately
or laid down in stages. Voices can be double-and –triple-tracked to create richer sounds.
There may be as many as 24 separate tracks for an ad. Mixing occurs when the tracks are
combined, with appropriate adjustments made in volume and tone levels.

National radio commercials are produced by an advertising agency, and duplicate copies of
the tape are distributed to local stations around the country. Local stations might produce
commercials for local advertisers, with the station’s staff providing the creative and
production expertise. The recording is done in house using the station’s studio. Mny such
commercials are designed to run 5 seconds short of the time purchased to give the local
announcer time to add live local tag. Copy of the tag is included with the produced tape.

Producing TV Commercials

Producing a major national commercial may take the work of hundreds of people and cost
as much as a half million dollars. The 1984 commercial for Apple Computer that ran only
once during the 1985. Super Bowl used a cast of 200 and is estimated to have cost half a
million dollars. Since that time expensive commercials have been produced. The expense
makes sense only if the ads will reach large numbers of people.

There are a number of ways to produce a message for a television commercial. It can be
filmed live or prerecorded using film videotape. It can also be shot frame using animation
techniques. These filming and recording techniques are outlined in the following sections.

Live Recording

The history of live filming of commercials includes numerous stories about refrigerator
doors that wouldn’t open and dogs that refused to eat dog food. These traumatic
experiences explain why most advertisers prefer to prerecord a commercial. Even when an
activity is live, such as sporting event, a 3to 7 second delay is built into the televising
process. This allows a commercial delivered by a sports announcer, for instance, to be
stopped before it goes on the air if there is a serious error such as a mispronunciation of
the sponsor’s name. as a result, there are very few instances when a commercial is actually
shown live in real time.

Film

Most television commercials are shot on 16-mm or 35-mm film. The film is shot as a
negative and processed, after which the image is transferred to videotape. This transferring
technique is called film to tape transfer. Film consists of a series of frames on celluloid,
actually each frame is a still shot. The film passes through a projector, and the small
changes from frame to frame create the illusion of motion. Film is shot at 24 frames per
second. In film to tape transfer the film is converted to videotape that uses 30 frames per
second. To edit on film. The term cut, which comes from this editing procedure, is used to
describe an abrupt transition from one view of a scene to another.
Videotape

Until the 1980’s videotape was thought of as an inferior alternative to film. Originally, it
was used mainly by the television news industry because it records sound and images
instantly, without a delay for film processing, and videotape can be replayed immediately.
Videotape’s cheap cousin image has changed dramatically as the quality of videotape has
improved. Also, a number of innovations in editing have made the process more precise
and faster computer editing has improved accuracy and made special effects possible.

Animation

The technique of animation records images on film one frame at a time. Cartoon figures, for
example, are sketched with a slight change to indicate a small progression in the movement
of an arm or a leg or a facial expression. Animation is traditionally shot at 12 or 16
drawings per second. Low-budget animation uses fewer drawings, so the motion looks
jerky. Because of the hand work, animation is labor intensive and expensive. The
introduction of computers has accelerated the process. Now illustrators darw only the
beginning and the end of the action sequence; the computer plots out the frames in
between.

Stop Motion

A particular type of animation is stop motion., a technique used to film inanimate objects
like the Pillsbury Doughboy, which is a puppet. The little character is moved a bit at a time
and filmed frame by frame. The same technique is used in claymation, which involves
creating characters from clay and then photographing them one frame at a time.

The Production Process

For the bigger national commercials, there are a number of steps in the production process
but they can be grouped into four categories: message design, preproduction, the shoot,
and postproduction.

Preproduction
The producer and staff first develop a set of production notes, describing in detail every
aspect of the production. These are important in finding talent and location, building sets,
and getting bids and estimates from specialists.
Before commercial can be filmed or taped, the production team must handle a number of
arrangements. Once the bids for production have been approved, the creative team and the
producer, director, and other key players hold a preproduction meeting to outline every
step of the production process and anticipate every problem that may arise. They also
finalize a detailed schedule acceptable to all parties.

Then the work begins: the talent agency begins casting the roles, usually through a series of
auditions. The production team has to find a location and arrange site use with owners,
police and other officials. If sets are needed, they have to be built. Finding the prop is a test
of inguineinty, and the prop person may wind up visiting hardware stores, secondhand
stores and may even the local dump. Costumes may also have to be made.

The Shoot

Although the actual filming takes a rather short time, the set-up and rehearsal can take
incredible amounts of time. The film crew includes a number of technicians, all of whom
have to know what is happening and what they are supposed to do. Everyone reports to the
director. If the sound is being recorded at the time of shooting, the recording is handled by
a mixer, who operates the recording equipment, and a mic or boom person, who sets up the
microphones. For both film and video recording, the camera operators are the key
technicians.

Other technicians include the gaffer, who is the chief electricians, and the grip, who moves
things such as the sets. The grip also lays tracks for the dolly on which the camera is
mounted and pushes the camera dolly along the track at the required speed. The script
clerk checks the dialogue and other script details and times the scenes. All the technicians
are supported by their own crews of assistants. A set is a busy, crowded place.

The commercial is shot scene by scene, but not necessarily in the order set down in the
script. Each scene is shot and reshot until all the elements come together. If the commercial
is filmed in videotape, the director plays it back immediately to determine what needs
correcting. Film has to be processed before the director review it. These processed scenes
are called dailies. Rushes are rough versions of the commercial assembled from cuts of the
raw film footage. They are viewed immediately after the filming to make sure everything
necessary has been filmed.

If the audio is to be recorded separately in a sound studio, it is often recorded after the film
is shot to synchronize the audio with the footage. Directors often wait to see exactly how
the action appears before they witer and record the audio track. If the action is set to music,
then the music may be recorded before the shoot and the filming done to the music.

Postproduction

For film, much of the work happens after the shoot. That is when the commercial begins to
emerge from the hands and mind of the editor. Editing can condense, extend, and jumble
time. Condensing time might show a man getting off from work, cut to the man showering,
then cut to the man approaching the bar. Extending time is the train is taking forever to
reach the car. To jumble time, you might cut from the present to flashback of a remembered
past event or flash forward to an imagined scene in the future.

In film a rough cut is a preliminary edited version of the story. The editor chooses the best
shots and assembles them to create a scene. The scenes are then joined together. After the
revision and reediting are completed, an interlock is made. The audio and film as separate,
they can be listened to simultaneously. The final version with the sound and film mixed
together is called an answer print.

For the commercial to run at hundreds of stations around the country, duplicate copies
have been made. This process is called dubbing, and the copies are called release prints.
Release prints typically are distributed on 16-mm film or videotape. Because the industry
now uses the film-to-tape transfer process. Most production is done on videotape, thereby
avoiding much of the film laboratory work.

Web Advertising

An internet broadcast model is what many major advertisers, such as Procter & Gamble,
have been waiting for. They want to make the Internet advertising more like television
advertising. Actually, they want to make it better than television advertising: all the visual
impact of transitional broadcast with the additional value of interactivity.

The goal of advertisers is to make their ads more involving. Interactive advertising allows
customers to become more involved because they initiate most of the action. Experience
during this interaction will drive brand attitudes.

The important trend is that web advertising is moving away from the banner and
marketers are experimenting with new forms and interactive product demonstrations such
as pop-up windows, daughter windows, and side frames. For example, Procter & Gamble
has used the “Bounty Match Games”, similar to the famous “Concentration” game, which
invites consumers to identify and match the appropriate spills. P&G’s Vice President of
advertising reports. We’re finding that folks can’t quit once they get started. He also reports
that the company is learning from the execution about design techniques for interactive
messages, particularly in the area of downloading speed.

Another P&G site is one that supports the scope send-a-kiss campaign, where visitors can
send electronic kiss to the special people in their lives. The site is customized for special
holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. P&G has found that of those who visit
the site, 20 percent actually send e-mail kisses to Mom on Mother’s Day.

Web design

Because of the magic of digitizing images. Web pages can combine elements and seeding
styles from all different media print: print, film, sound, and games. That, as well as the need
to move through massive amounts of data, creates an entirely new design from whose
biggest is challenge is ease of use.

Web pages, particularly the first screen, should be designed like posters. The graphics
should be eye catching without demanding too much downloading time. Type should be
simple: use one or two typefaces and avoid all-capitals and letter spacing that distorts the
words. Because there is often a lot to read, black type on a high-contrast background
usually is best. Make everything – type and graphics- big enough to see on the smallest
screen.

Navigation is a critical factor. User should be able to move through the site easily and find
the information they seek. There should be navigation aids such as buttons that return
users to homepage. Banners and Web sites should also include instructions, such as “Click
Here”. Ideally, users who visit a site regularly should be able to customize the site to fit
their own needs.

Designing banners

According to Michael T. Glaspie, author of How to Sell Anything to Anyone, Anytime,

grabbing attention with banners depends on copy, color, and graphics, in that order. For
copy he recommends using free offers, fear, curiosity, humor or the big promise. For color,
use yellow, orange, blue and green rather than reds and blacks. Animated banners offer
value in that they increase ad space by rotating copy. But banners should not take too long
to load or advertisers will lose customer’s interest.

According to one study, banners sit in the lower corner of the screen next to the scroll bar
generated a 228 percent higher click through rate than ads at the top of the page. Banner
ads place one-third down the page generated 77 percent more lick-through than those at
the top.

Another study indicated that large, dynamic banners do not generate higher click-through
rates than a small, static banners, but incentive banners did increase click-through when
compared to ads without incentives.

One mistake advertisers often make is to forget to include the company name or brand in
the banner. Users should be able to tell immediately what product or brand the banner is
advertising. And don’t forget to include instructions.

Another study of the biggest-revenue banners found that although they satisfy the need for
entertainment by using multimedia, interactivity, emotional appeals, color or provocative
headlines, and the need for information by using rational appeals, news and information
headlines, and context linked to the product, they seldom provide economic appeals. In
other words, most banners were deficient in offering promotional incentives.

eRules for eDesign

Rule One: Manage your image. Projecting and protecting your brand identity are no less
important online than in any other medium.

Rule Two: Simple navigation. Retail stores don’t stay in business unless their customers
can find what they want, easily. The same applies to Web sites. Remember K.I.S.S.?

Rule Three: Don’t waste time. Do you like to wait in line? Do you go back to stores where
sales clerks don’t respond? Make sure your consumers find the information they’re looking
for-fast.

Rule Four: Keep your product fresh. Spiders may constantly comb the Web, but if anyone
find cobwebs on your site, they won’t come back.

Rule Five: Give it away. If your site doesn’t offer real value, there’s no real reason for
anyone to visit.

Rule Six: Information-in-the-end. When someone takes the time to link through your site,
don’t let them come up empty. Reward them with content, content, content.

Rule Seven: Get interactive! Mass media are passive, the new media are interactive. Which
direction do you think the world is going?
Rule Eight: Follow the rule of ten. Ten is enough for God and David Letterman, so leran
from them. Keep your lists short, too.

Rule Nine: Promote your site. Build it and they will come was a nice theme for the movie
field of dreams. But if you want customers, not virtual ghosts, on your site, get smart about
promotion – in the real world.

Rule Ten: The rules will change. No one who does business as usual today is going to be in
business tomorrow. So move often and as intelligently as possible. Keep up with fast-
changing online business trends.

DIRECT-RESPONSE MARKETING

Chapter outline

Direct marketing The media of direct response

The direct-response industry Managing a database
The player Integrated direct marketing

Chapter objectives

When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to

1. Define and distinguish between direct marketing and direct-response advertising.
2. Identify types of direct marketing
3. Describe the player in direct marketing
4. Evaluate the various media that direct-response programs can use
5. Explain how databases are used in direct response
6. Discuss the role of direct marketing in integrated programs

A revolution is taking place in marketing and advertising as marketeers are moving

to more direct of communication with their customers. In the past marketing
communication was a monologue, with advertisers talking to anonymous consumers
through the mass media. Now communication is becoming a one-on-one dialogue using
computers and the web, the mail, video, and the telephone to talk directly to customers.

This chapter focuses on direct marketing in all its various forms. We explore this
new world of one-to-one marketing and examine how the folks at Adworks used direct
marketing to solve a problem for the Baltimore Opera.
DIRECT MARKETING

Direct marketing is a selling method applied in virtually every consumers and business-to-
business category. For example, IBM, Digital Equipment, Xerox and other manufacturers
selling office products use direct marketing, as do almost all banks and insurance
companies. Airlines, hotels and cruise lines use it. Packaged-goods marketers such as
general foods, Colgate and Bristol Myers, household product marketers such as Black And
Decker, and automotive companies use it. Direct marketing is also used for membership
drives, fund-raising and solicitation of donations by non-profit organization such as the
sierra club, the Audubon society and political associations.

There is some confusion over names and what they mean in the general area of direct
marketing (direct marketing, direct mail, mail order, direct-response advertising). We will
use direct marketing to refer to a business model and direct advertising to refer to the
communication efforts that deliver direct marketing. According to the direct marketing
association (DMA) direct marketing is an interactive system of marketing which uses one
or more advertising media to affect a measurable response and/or transaction at any
location”

Pete Hoke, Jr. Publisher of Direct marketing magazine adds one element to these
definitions. In direct marketing a database – a customer file – must exist. Five components
shown in table 14.1 are embedded in this definition.

Dell has built a huge business selling computers directly to consumers rather than through
dealers, as its competitors do. Dell’s success is evident in its market share, which hit 10.1
percent of desktop PCs worldwide in 1998, up from 6.9 percent at the end of 1997. Why
don’t Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM copy the Dell model and sell computer directly?
For one thing, dealers who deliver big sales to these companies would retaliate if they
started experimenting with direct sales. Furthermore, it takes a lot of effort and
infrastructure to set up a direct marketing business rather than hiring an army of sales
reps, Dell has an army of people in fulfilment who take the order, find the product, handle
the money, and arrange for the shipping.

The general benefits direct marketing offers to consumers are convenience, efficiency and
compression of decision making time. One can see how these benefits are derived when a
consumer purchases a product through one of the video shopping systems such as
demonstrated and modelled. She sees an item she likes, places an order via the toll-fee
number, pays with her visa card and receives delivery in 48 hours. The item cost
considerably less than the retail price has a money back guarantee, and Mrs. Smith never
has to leave her home.
Direct Marketing Strategy

Direct marketing uses the same general planning framework suggested for advertising
earlier in this text. It is unique, however because of certain elements considered crucial to
its success, such as the quality of its database. And the database determines the extent to
which the targeting can be narrowly focused on a certain type of prospect.

Unlike traditional advertising direct marketing is process that integrates three business
functions, communication, selling and distribution. As outlined in figure 14.1 there are five
basic steps in direct marketing, (1) strategic decision (research helps and advertisers
target, segment, prospect and set objectives): (2) the communication of an offer(the
message) by the seller through the appropriate medium; (3) response, or customer
ordering; (4) fulfilment or filling orders and handling exchanges and returns; and (5)
maintenance of the company’s database and customer relationships.

Targets And Segments

Direct marketing main advantage is its ability to do tight or narrow targeting defining
prospect in term of certain predictor variables that tare typical of the product’s users. One
study even proposed defining market segments in terms of their attitudes toward direct
marketing to eliminate the critics and focus on people who like direct marketing.
Prospecting characteristics match those of users.

For the Baltimore Opera, the target was high-income people who were well educated and
interested in the art that is people who like Shakespeare or other forms of cultural
entertainment. Furthermore, the target was segmented into two groups; (1) general
prospect (those who had expressed interest in some form of artistic or cultural activity
through attendance at live performance event or support of an arts organization) and (2)
opera prospects those who were already acquainted with or had expressed an interest in
opera through attendance at a performance, music purchasing habits, or a response to
earlier mailings).

In the other words, the adworks agency was able to find lists of people who are members of
groups, who have attended similar musical and cultural events, or who have responded to
mailings. Given the specific audience profiles, direct marketing was an effective way to
reach and influence these target segments.
The Message and Media Strategies

All the variables that are intended to satisfy the needs of the consumer are considered part
of the offer. These include the price the cost of shopping and handling optional features
future obligations, availability of credit, extra incentives, time and quantity limits and
guarantees or warrantees.

For the Baltimore Opera campaign, adworks design a mailer that could also as a poster,
actually an artistic poster that looks like something you would find in a gallery and reflects
the cultural appeal of opera. Advertising in previous years had used witty, unexpected edge
that appealed to the sophistication of the targeted audience and the direct mail pieces
maintained that edge, the flyer/poster in the chapter opening for example, was headlined.
Opera. A sublime, life-enriching art form whose poetry transcends mere narrative and
every once in a while, someone gets stabbed.

In addition to direct mail, adworks used public relations to give the Baltimore Opera
campaign high visibility in the media. They used telemarketing to reach prospects for
whom phone numbers were available. Finally they launched a web site with a component
that allowed for direct ordering of subscription tickets online.

The Response

Unlike advertising where the primary objective is to generate a psychological response

such as brand awareness, direct marketing aims to generate a behavioural response.
Consumer response may take the form of direct action (purchase, donation, subscription
memberships) or behaviour that precedes purchase (attending a demonstration,
participating in a taste test, test driving a car, or asking for more information).

Fulfilment and Customer Maintenance

In direct marketing, distribution is called fulfilment that is, getting the product to the
customer who ordered it. It includes all the back-end activities that take place both before
and after orders are received. Customer service and knowledgeable order takers are
critical to free limited-time trials and acceptance of several credit cards, are important
techniques for overcoming customer resistance to buying through direct-response media.
The most critical aspect of maintaining a customer relationship however is using a
database to track customer interactions and transactions.

THE DIRECT-RESPONSE INDUSTRY

Direct response has been an important advertising area for over a century. The first major
venture by an important national company into mail order – delivering the product to the
home rather than having it purchase at a store – was the publication of the Montgomery
ward catalog in 1872.

The direct mail/advertising association founded in 1917 is currently known as the direct
marketing association (DMA). The DMA is active in industry research and professional
training programs. One of DMA’s most successful programs is a seminar for college student
sponsored by its Direct Marketing Education Foundation. A map of the industry is depicted
in Figure 14.2.

The computer has had the biggest impact on direct marketing. Advertisers use the
computer to manage lists of names, sort prospects by important characteristics such as Zip
code or previous ordering patterns, handle addressing and feed personalized addresses
into the printer. Consumers are also beginning to use their personal computers at home to
reach marketers through home-shopping services. For example, customers can buy season
tickets on the Baltimore Opera web site.

Direct-Response Advertising

The term direct-response signals the reason marketers like to use this form of
communication. The common thread that runs through all types of direct-response
advertising is that of action. That is, direct-response advertising seeks to achieve an action-
oriented objective- such as an inquiry, a visit to a showroom an answer to a questionnaire,
or the purchase of a product- as a result of the advertising message and without the
intervention of a sales representative.

Direct-response advertising can use any medium: magazine, newspapers, radio, television,
direct mail, or even posters combined with direct mail, as in the Baltimore Opera campaign.
The action objective contrasts with brand or image advertising, where the desired
response to the advertising message typically is awareness, a favourable attitude, or a
change of opinion. With brand or image advertising, the sale usually is made by a retailer in
a store or a sales representative who calls at the office or home.

Database Marketing

With the advent of computes and the development of extensive databases, it is becoming
possible for an advertiser to develop one-on-one communication with those most likely to
be in the market for a certain product. This is the ultimate in tight targeting because the
information allows advertisers to understand consumers more thoroughly and zero in on
primary prospects. In other words, although traditional advertising targets groups of
people database advertising targets the individual based on some common characteristics
that predict that a particular consumer will be a good prospect.

Based on recent research conducted by john Cummings & Partners DBM/scan, database
marketing usage had increased 30 percent by the nud-1990’s, with 3,207 database
programs noted in the packaged-goods industry alone. Moreover, the companies
committed to using database marketing for the long term grew to approximately 42
percent.

Smart Targeting

Computers and their programs are getting smarter. Services such as Prodigy not only
provide the user with online buying services, but also remember purchases and over time
can build a purchase profile of each user. This kind of information is very valuable to
marketers, resellers and their agencies. It’s also scary to consumer activists and consumers
who worry about their privacy.

Some grocery stores have computerized their grocery carts with displays that show
individually selected advertised special as the customer moves from one aisle to another.
Customers at some of these stores have been issued bank cards to use in making purchases.
When a customer makes a purchase using the card, the store’s computer provides an item
by item list of that customer’s purchases and adds this to the demographic and income
information on the customer’s card application. The banks are so interested in this
information that they are willing to waive the usual fees and charges to the store in
exchange for the data. Supermarkets also use club cards that give customers access to sales
prices.

This new development is called database marketing, relationship marketing, or

MaxiMarketing. More and more marketers are moving to tis new form of direct marketing
as a way to develop a deeper, longer-lasting relationship with their customers, auto
companies, for instance, use database marketing systems to link national marketing,
service and dealer organization with customers. Databases allow companies to call new
customer within 30 days of delivery of their cars to get their impression of the product and
to take care of any problems. Such systems can also be used to profile customers and
research their purchasing behaviour.

Home Shopping
As retailing has stagnated, analysts see hone shopping as a glimmer of hope for the
industry. The multi-billion-dollar industry has been growing by some 20 percent a year. At
the heart of this explosion are the tremendous growth of Electronic Commerce (the
practice of selling goods and services over the internet), and QVC and the Home Shopping
Network on cable, both which advertise an array of products ranging from clothing to gold
jewellery, from cosmetics to throw pillows. Consumers are invited to order merchandise
from these networks via toll-free phone lines.

Originally having a rather low-brow image, home shopping networks are now appealing to
more upscale retailers such as Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. As interactive TV becomes
feasible and electronic commerce continues to develop, more exciting types of electronic
store will offer consumers the ability to take personal shopping trips via cable television or
their computer.

The Player

Three main player are involved in direct-response marketing: advertisers, who use direct
response to sell products or services by phone, mail, or the Web; Certain agencies that
specialize in direct-response advertising; and consumers, who are the recipients of direct-
mail, e-mail, and phone solicitation and order products via mail, telephone or computer.

The Advertisers

More than 12,000 firms are engaged in direct-response marketing. Their primary business
is selling products and services by mail or telephone. This number does not include the
many retail stores that use direct marketing as a supplemental marketing program.
Traditionally, the product categories that have made the greatest use of direct marketing
have been book and record clubs, publishers, insurance companies and collectibles,
packaged foods and gardening firms.

A recent study sponsored by the DMA showed the following.

 When direct-response advertising was used to solicit a direct order, generate a lead,
or generate retail store traffic, the effort resulted in nearly $600 billion in sales,
 Business-to-business sales from direct orders, lead generation, and traffic
generation were estimated to have reached nearly $500 billion.

The Agencies
The four types of firms involved in direct-response advertising include advertising
agencies, independent direct-marketing agencies, service firms and fulfilment houses as
outlined in table 14.2.

The adworks agency, which is the creative genius behind the Baltimore Opera company’s
award-winning campaign, position itself as a strategic planning consultant and creates a
partnership approach to problem solving with its clients. The agency is known for craft
before making a single ad. This kind of philosophy leads to highly integrated campaign, as
Baltimore opera company case illustrates. In that case the opera offerings, the messages
including those delivered by the opera company itself, were designed to overcome the
negative notions of opera as stuffy, boring and hard to relate to.

The Consumers

Although people might dislike the intrusiveness of direct-response advertising, many

appreciate the convenience. Former Postmaster General Preston Tisch observed that it is a
method of purchasing goods in a society that is finding itself with more disposable income
but with less time to spend it. Stan Rapp described this type of consumer in a speech to the
annual DMA conference a several years ago as a new generation of consumers armed with
push0-botton phones and a pocket full of credit cards getting instant gratification by
shopping and doing financial transaction from the den or living room.

The push-button shopper now is joined by an even larger group of mouse-clicking

shopping. It takes some daring to order a product you can’t see, touch, feel, or try out.
These consumers are self-confident and willing to take a chance but don’t like to be
disappointed.

The Media of Direct Response

Direct response is a multimedia field. All conventional advertising mass media can be used
as well as other that you might not think of as advertising media, such as the telephone and
the postal service.

Direct Mall

Direct mail is granddaddy of direct response and still commands big marketing dollar. At
the end of the 1990’s it accounts for some $37 billion in advertising expenditures. A direct-
mail piece is a self-standing advertising message for a product or service that is delivered
by mail. It may be as simple as a single-page letter or as complex as a package consisting of
a letter a brochure supplement flyer and an order card with a return envelope A 2-5
percent response rate is considered typical.

Most direct mail is sent using the third class bulk mail permit which requires a minimum of
200 identical pieces. Third class is cheaper than the first class, but it takes longer for
delivery. Estimates of non delivery of third class mail run as high as 8 percent.

A number of advantages and disadvantages are associated with direct mail. Table 14.3
summarizes the advantages and disadvantages and suggest how to use direct mail most
effectively.

Direct-Mail Message Design

How it looks is as important as what it says. Progressive direct marketers supported by

research findings, have discovered that the appearance of a direct-response ad- the
character and personality communicated by the graphics – can enhance or destroy the
credibility of the product information.

Catalogs

A catalog is multipage direct-mail publication that shows a variety of merchandise. The big
books are those produced by such retail giants a Montgomery Ward and JCPenney. The
Spiegel Company is a major catalog merchandiser that doesn’t have a retail outlet. Saks
Fifth Avenue, Neiman-Marcus and Bloomingdale’s are major retailer that supports their in-
tore sales with expensive catalogs. Jeans maker Levi Stauss which has always relied on
other retailers, sent in first ever mail order catalog in 1998 to approximately 100,000
customer and prospect.

As databases have improved catalog marketers are refining their databases and culling out
the unprofitable. Even though catalog marketers are cutting back on the waste in their
mailings, there are still a lot of catalogs in mailboxes. L.L. Bean still mails to 115 million
customers and Lillian Vernon Mails 175 million catalogs a year.

The real growth in this field is in the area of specialty catalogs. There are catalogs for every
hobby as well as for more general interests such as men’s and women’s fashions sporting
goods house wares gardening office supplies and electronics.

There are catalogs specifically for purses rings cheese and hams stained-glass supplies
garden benches and computer accessories to name just a few. For example, Balducci’s Fruit
and vegetable store in Greenwich Village, New York produces a catalog promising
overnight delivery of cooked gourmet meals.

Catalog message design

The most important part of the catalog message is the graphics. Products are displayed in
attractive settings showing as many details and features as possible. People scan through a
catalog looking at the pictures. Only after the visual stops them do they read the copy block.
Thus copy usually is minimal, providing such details as composition fabric, colour, sizes,
and pricing.

Some catalogs are designed to create an image, such as the banana republic and Caswell-
Massey catalog, which come in unusual sizes and use distinctive illustrative styles. Other
catalogs are low-budget, particularly those in special0interst areas such as hobbies and
professional supplies. A catalog for woodworkers or plumbers might be printed on cheap
paper in black and white. Most general-interest catalogs, however are moving to high-
quality reproduction with slick paper and full colour printing. The fashion catalogs are
often shot at exotic locations, and the reproduction quality is excellent.

Electronic Catalogs

Catalogs are becoming available in videocassette and computer disk formats as well online,
a topic discussed in the next chapter. Buick developed an electronic catalog on computer
disk. The message is interactive and features animated illustrations. It presents graphic
description and detailed text on the Buick line, including complete specification.

Video catalog are used by a number of advertisers. Video offers a dynamic live presentation
of the product, its benefits and its uses. With more than half of American homes owning
VCR’s this medium is increasingly important. Cadillac developed a video brochure for
Allante, its luxury car. Air France and Soloflex have also used videos for in-home
promotions.

Telemarketing

More direct-marketing dollars are spent on telemarketing- ads delivered through phone
calls – than on any other medium. The telephone combines personal contact with mass
marketing, which is an important factor in relationship marketing.

Telemarketing is personal, that is its primary advantage and the one used most effectively
in the Baltimore Opera campaign. The human voice is the most persuasive of all
communication tools. Telephone conversation is also two-way except for the pre-recorded
sales pitches. In a live call, there is a conversation in which the prospect can ask questions if
the person isn’t a prospect the caller can find out immediately and end the call.

Telemarketing is almost as persuasive as personal sales, but a lot less expensive. A personal
sales call may cost anywhere from $50 to $100 when you consider time, materials and
transportation. A telephone solicitation may range form $2 to $5 per call, or CPM of to the
CPM of an advertisement placed in any one of the mass media ($10 - $50). If this medium is
so expensive, why would anyone use it? The answer is that the returns are much higher
than those generated by mass advertising.

Phone companies are getting into the act and offering their customers a service called
Privacy Manager that screens out sales calls. For customers who have Caller ID number
that register as “unavailable” or “unknown” are intercepted by a recorded message that
asks callers to identify themselves. If the caller does so, the calls ring through.

Types of Telemarketing

There are two types of telemarketing: inbound and outbound. An inbound or incoming
telemarketing call originates with the customer. L. L. Bean’s Telephone representatives
handle inbound calls. The L. L. Bean ad draws attention to the representative’s friendly and
helpful manner. Calls originating with the firm are outgoing or outbound and these are the
ones that generate the most consumer resistance.

Most companies that use telemarketing hire a specialized company to handle the
solicitation and or taking. They do this because most of the activity occurs in bunches. If a
company advertises a product on television, for example, switchboard will be flooded with
calls for the next 10 minutes. Companies that do occasional direct-response advertising
don’t have the facilities to handle a mass response. A service bureau that handles a number
of accounts is more capable of coping with the bursts of activity that follow promotional
activities.

Print Media

Ads in the mass media are less directly targeted than are direct mail and catalogs but they
can still provide the opportunity for a direct response. Ads in newspapers and magazines
can carry a coupon, an order form an address or a toll0free or 900 telephone number for
customer to respond to. The response may be either to purchase something or to ask for
more information. In many cases the desired response in an inquiry that becomes a sales
lead for field representative.
In Maximarketing direct marketing experts Stan Rapp and Tom Collins discuss the power of
double-duty advertising that combines brand reinforcement messages with direct-
response campaign to promote a premium, a sample or a coupon. American Express used
this double duty concept when it launched your company, a quarterly mailed to more than
1 million American Express corporate card members who own small businesses. Magazines
have been trying to do this with demographic edition and selective bindings as well.

In magazines the response cards may be either bind-ins or blow-ins. These are
freestanding cards that are separate from the ad. Bind-in cards are stapled or glued right
into the binding of the magazine adjoining the ad. They have to be torn out to be used.
Blow-in cards are blow into the magazine after it is printed by special machinery that puffs
open the pages. These cards are loose and may fall out in distribution, so they are less
reliable.

Broadcast Media
Television and radio can also be used in direct marketing advertising. Television is a major
medium for direct marketers who are advertising a broadly targeted product and who have
the budget to afford the ever increasing costs of television advertising. Direct-response
advertising on television used to be the province of the late night hard sell with pitch for
vegematics and screwdrivers guaranteed to last a lifetime. As more national marketers
such as Time Warner move into the medium, the direct response commercial is becoming
more general in appeal.

Cable television lends itself to direct response commercials because the medium is more
tightly targeted to particular interests. For example, ads on MTV for products targeted to
the teenage audience can generate a tremendous response. QVC and the Home Shopping
Network reach more that 70 million households.

Radio has not been a dynamic medium for direct response advertising because the radio
audience is too preoccupied with other things to record an address or a telephone number.
However home listeners is able to make a note and place a call and local marketer’s
audience. For Example, teenagers are easy to reach through radio. There has even been
some success selling products such as cellular phones and paging systems specifically to
mobile audience.

The Internet

Although traditional advertisers has been looking for a way to use the internet, direct
marketing saw its potential immediately. Actually, direct marketing particularly catalog
marketing is the model for e-Commerce. Says James Rosenfield of Rosenfield & Associate,
Madison Avenue is trying to embrace the internet as the next great advertising medium.
They have it wrong. It’s the next great commercial information medium. It’s not going to
supplement TV. It’s going the supplement direct mail and telemarketing.

One promise for internet marketing is to reduce or eliminate mail order catalogs, which are
expensive to produce and send. Another feature of internet direct marketing is greater
sampling opportunities. Online music stores now have 275,000 music clips for shopper to
listen to before making a purchase. Eddie Bauer lets site visitors “try” on clothes. It also
sends them e-mail message offering special prices on items based on their past purchasing
patterns.

The internet is also creating new ways to gather information on consumers. One of the
more ambitions is allowing consumers to create their own network of contacts and then
having marketers cross promote across those networks. The giant bookseller Amazon.com
owns PlanetAll, a Web-based address book, calendar and remind these subscribers about
upcoming birthdays, but can also suggest books that those friends and relatives have
indicated that they’d like to receive as a gifts.

Managing A Databse

As noted earlier, the database is at the heart of direct marketing. According to the direct
marketing association, marketing a database has four primary objectives.

Managing a database operation is extremely difficult, and its growing in complexity along
with improvements in technology. The initial decision a company must make is whether it
will gather data from internal sources, or both. Int5ernal, or in house, databases are derive
from customer receipts, credit card information, or personal information cards completed
by customers. The internal approach is cost-effective as long as a company has the
requisite expertise resources.

If either expertise or resources are lacking, a company can obtain commercial databases
from firm whose sole purpose is to collect, analyze, categorize, and market an enormous
variety of detail about the American consumer. Companies such as National Decision
Systems, Persoft, and Donnelly Marketing Information Systems are only a few of the firms
that provide these relational databases (that is, their databases contain information useful
in segmenting as well as the contract information. ) For inst5ance, Donnelly developed
Hispanic Portraits, a database of households that segments the U.S. Hispanic population
into 18 cluster groups.
Direct-mail lists a database of prospects, can be purchased or rented from the list brokers
w3ho manage a variety of list from many different sources and can act as consultants to
help you find a list tied to den graphic, psychographic, and geographic breakdowns. They
have classified their data on America’s households down to the carrier routes. For instance,
one company has identified 160 Zip codes it calls “Black Enterprise” clusters, inhabited by
“upscale, white-collar black families” in major urban fringe areas. If you want to target
older women in New England who play tennis, most major firms would be able to put
together a list for you by combining list, called merging, and deleting repeated names,
called purging.

Types of list

There are three types of list; house lists, response lists, and complied lists (Table 14.5).
New lists can be created by merging and purging. For example, you may want to develop a
list of people who are in market for fine furniture in your city. You could buy a list of

List Type Description

House list A list of marketer’s own customers or members, its most important
target market. Probably its most valuable list. Stores offer credit plans,
service plans, and special announcements, and contests that require
customers to sign up to maintain this link. Some stores, such as Radio
Shack, fill in the customer’s name and address at6 the cash register on
the sales slip. The carbon copy becomes a source of names for the list.

Response list Derived from people who respond to something such as a direct-mail
offer or solicitation, a response list is similar to the advertiser’s target
audience. For example, if you sell dog food, you might like a list of
people who have responded ad for a pet identification collar. Usually
available for rent from original direct-mail marketer .Crucial list
because it indicates a willingness to buy something for pets by direct
mail.

Compiled list Complied list are rente4d from a direct-mail list broker. Usually list of
some specific category, such as sports car owner, new home buyers,
graduating seniors, new mothers, association members, or
subscribers to a, book club, or record club.

INTEGRATED DIRECT MARKETING

Throughout this text we extol the benefits of integrated marketing a strategic approach.
Historically, direct marketing is the first area of marketing communication that has
adopted his philosophy. In fact it would be appropriate to rename marketing integrated
direct marketing.

One reason integration plays so well in the direct response market is because of its
emphasis on the customer. By using databases , companies can become more sensitive to
customer wants and needs and less likely to bother them with unwanted commercial
messages. One expert defines integrated direct marketing (IDM) as “a systematic method
of getting close to your best current potential customers. “ He explains that it relies on
building, maintaining, and sensitively using a customer-focused database.

Linking the Channels

Many major advertising agencies that want to provide integrated, full-service promotional
programs for their clients have bought direct-response companies. However, traditional
advertising agencies have found it difficult to integrate direct marketing into their
operation. Apparently, the differences between direct and traditional advertising are
greater than first envisioned.

Instead of treating each medium separately as advertising agencies tend to do, integrated
direct marketing companies seek to achieve precise, synchronized use of the right medium
at the right time, with a measurable return on dollars spent.

Here’s an example: Say you do a direct-mail campaign, which commonly generates a 2

percent response, a percentage long viewed as an average return. If you include a toll-free
800 number in your mailing as an alternative to the standard mail-in-reply-with well
trained, knowledgeable people handling those incoming calls with a tight script-you can
achieve a 3 to 4 percent response rate. If you follow up your mailing with a phone call
within 24 to 72 hours after your prospect receives the mailing, you can generate a response
two to eight times as high as the base rate of 2 percent. So, by adding your 800 number, you
bring the response rate from 2 percent to 3 or 4 percent. By following up with phone calls,
you bring your total response rate as high as 5 to 8 percent.

Same Message, Multiple Sources

The principle behind integration is that not all people respond the same way to direct-
response advertising. One person may sit down and very carefully fill out the order form.
Someone else may
 Immediately reach for the phone to call the 800 number. Most people, if an ad grabs them
at all, tend to think to themselves, Looking interesting, but im not sure it’s for me. Let me
put it in my pending pile. That pile grows and grows, and then goes into the garbage at the
end of the month. However, the phone call may get them off the fence as they take a
suggested action. Hewlett-Packard, AT&T,Citibank, and IBM have all used integrated direct
marketing – that is, using multiple sources to reinforce the same message- to improve their
direct-marketing response rates.

An example of a company that has become interested in integrated marketing

communication in direct marketing in Safeway Stores. Essentially, Safeway has signed up
manufacturers such as Quaker oats Co. and Stouffer Food Corp. for a database marketing
program that trades incremental trade dollars for top-notch data. The program exemplifies
the convergence of two trends: Grocers are looking for manufacturers to supplement their
own shrunken marketing budgets, and manufacturers eager to allocate new field-
marketing support dollars are shopping for local deals. Up to seven manufactures fund
Safeway’s quarterly mailings in exchange for in store support and sales data.

A problem with direct marketing is its tendency not ot mesh well with a company’s
operations, its distribution systems, communications, research, overall strategy, or even
culture. For example, direct marketers have been part of the programs that have failed
because they are so successful: Catalog companies have run out of inventories, costing
them not only shorter sales but long term goodwill, and financial firms have generated too
many leads for their sales people to keep up with. Another common failure in integration
involves direct marketing and advertising. Direct marketing messages and advertising
often do not reinforce each other because the people who do direct response advertising
usually are not integrated organizationally with people who do advertising. Nor is the
advertising agency integrated with the direct marketing agency or in-house group. This is
changing, however, as clients demand more coordination of their markeitgn
communication programs and is using more cross-functional planning processes.

Interactive Technology

Interactive technology makes this area of direct marketing. Interactive means that
consumer can respond to the message. The telephone is a simple example of medium that
both delivers and receives messages. For example, Pepsi planned a call-in-sweepstakes for
the 1991 Super Bowl but postponed the effort because it feared that the nation’s
telecommunication capacity could not handle the response. Interactive technology is being
developed, possibly using toll free 800 or 888 number or 900 pay-for-call numbers, that
will be able to generate 30,000 simultaneous calls and take detailed messages, such as
answers to a trivia quiz or a credit card order. Such system will be capable of handling up
to 30,000 phone calls in 30 minutes. At present, this system still envisions using a bank of
clerks to transcribe names and addresses spoken by callers, but computers speech
recognition may eliminate the need.

The secret to the success of database marketing is the power of the computer to manage
the incredible wealth of descriptive data that are now being accumulated along with
prospect lists. Most list brokers have standard list for sale, but in addition they can sort,
merge, and purge lists to custom-design one to fit a particular prospect profits.

Creating loyalty

One of the historical truths about the direct marketing industry is that merchandisers tend
to view the relationship with the consumer as a short-term one, with the assumption that
losing one unhappy customer is not a disaster because another one is right around the
corner. Although some still follow this philosophy, most have realized, as have IMC-
oriented marketers, that maintaining a long-term relationship with the consumer is crucial.

Changing the attitude of the consumer toward direct marketing has not been easy. the
question is how do you create a customer loyalty? Several attempts serve as good
examples. Companies such as Sprint are taking an innovative approach to sales force
training to enhance loyalty. In one case, or customers Siptech Display, a sprint
representative recognized a phone number that might have been disconnected mistakenly.
The simple act of calling to verify the disconnect order so impressed the customer that
Siptech decided to move its entire phone system to Sprint. Similarly, Sacks Fifth Avenue
identified a group of customers who accounted for half all sales and offered the group
exclusive benefit through a program called SacksFirst. The benefits include fashion
newsletter and first crack at all sales.

Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to create consumer loyalty is through a concept called
lifetime customer value (LCV). LCV is simply an estimate of how much purchase volume
you can accept to get over the time from various target markets or segments. To put it up
scientifically, LCV is the “over time volume/financial contribution of an individual customer
or customer segment, based on known consumption habits plus future consumption,
expectation, where contribution is defined as return on investment, revenue gains as a
function o marketing costs. In simple term, by knowing a consumer’s past behavior, you
can decide how much you want to spend to get him or her to buy your product, and you can
track your investment by measuring the response.