TV de Respuesta Directa

7/28/2019 TV de Respuesta Directa

1/6

MAIN FEATURE

22 | August 2012 | www.dmnews.com

A multichannel approach providesa clearer picture of DRTVs potential


2/6

www.dmnews.com | August 2012 | 23

MAIN FEATURE

By Alex Palmer

D irect response television (DRTV) may seemdownright old-fashioned as mobile and socialmarketing surge. But this traditional channelis not only highly adaptable, its also still highly effec-tiveeven in this increasingly dig ital world.

DRTV is television content thats designed to driveviewers to another channel (e.g., the telephone or a website) to take an action, such as purchasing a prod-uct or filling out a survey. This alone is no easy feat.

Yet, the ubiquity of handheld computing devices andthe deluge of online content make the DRTV market-ers job even more difficult, as consumers attention is

increasingly drawn away from TV. Not only is it morechallenging than ever to engage consumers, channelfragmentation can make it more difficult to track theimpact of individual television spots.

Additionally, the shift in the way people consumemedia affects one- and two-minute, short-form DRTVspots, as well as long-form, 28.5-minute infomercials.Short DRTV spots have traditionally showcasedproducts also available at retail, or that sell for lowerdollar value than those sold in the longer infomercials,which have been more likely to promote health equip-ment, beauty programs, or business and self-improve-ment courses not available at retail. This has been thecase in DRTV for decades and continues to separatethe two types of promotions, though both short- andlong-form face nearly identical challenges in driving customers online.

The audience is now savvier. They can go to a web-site, which converts at a much lower rate than phonecalls, and get additional information there or on theirmobile. There is audience fragmentation and the met-rics have gotten more difficult, says Ron Perlstein,president of InfoWorx Direct, a marketing agency thatspecializes in DRTV.

But Perlstein insists that DRTV provides marketing options unavailable anywhere else; long-form infor-mercials are beneficial to products with higher pricepoints, for example, because the format provides an

opportunity to go into detail about the products. Thekey, according to Perlstein and other industry watch-ers, is for marketers to leverage newer digital chan-nels to enhance their DRTV campaigns, making theircalls-to-action more effective than they were in the dayswhen consumers were glued to a single screen.

DRTV practices can excel when marketers take a multichannel approach, add innovative storytelling,and use creative integration with television program-ming. But the industry still must resolve growing is-sues around attribution and consumer mobility.

DRTV works best in amultichannel environment While DRTV marketers can no longer claim exclusivecommand over viewers time in front of a screen, manymarketers report that the growing number of deviceshas actually benefitted their television efforts.

With the prevalence of screens, [consumer] inter-activity with TV also increases, says Beth Vendice,president of direct response agency Mercury MediasPerformance Group.

On the whole, this effect has been positive, becauseit offers companies an additional revenue channel,according to Vendice. But she emphasizes that therise of digital has complicated marketers approach toDRTV, requiring them to consider how each spot tiesinto a multichannel campaign. We dont let a DRTVcampaign go out the door unless theres a search oremai l element, Vendice says.

Direct response firm Acquirgy has taken a similartack, recommending that marketers incorporate a strong search engine marketing (SEM) effort to coin-cide with any DRTV rollout. Viewers who see a DRTV spot are likely to log on to their computer andconduct an Internet searcha deceptively complicatedaction from a marketing standpoint.

For instance, while companies are increasingly like-ly to include a URL in a DRTV spot, consumers mighttype a company name, product name, or other type of

Two-screen viewerswho say theyre likely touse social media whilewatching TV; 64% offour-screen viewerssaid the same*

32%

THE NUMBERS | DRTVs multiple screen viewing opportunities

Four-screen viewersbetween the ages of 18and 44 who use socialmedia while watching TV*

74%Two-screen viewers

who learn about prod-ucts and services of ine;63% of four-screen view-ers said the same*

75%Tablet owners who

use them while watchingTV at least once a day; 41%of smartphone users saidthe same**

26%

Interactive Advertising Bureaus The Multiscreen Marketer report, May 2012 **Nielsens Q4 poll of mobile users

With theprevalenceof screens,[consumer]interactivitywith TV alsoincreases.

Beth VendicePresident,Mercury MediasPerformance Group


3/6


4/6

MAIN FEATURE


Hoovers Dirty HouseDRTV effort featureddemos and severaldecades of brandingelements

copies of his new album in an hour and each of those buyers had the option of signing up to receive informa-tion about similar offers in the future.

Changing content of DRTV As the market ing landscape gets more crowded, evensome brands not traditionally interested in DRTVhave become attracted to its ability to broadcast theirstory in a more sustained way than would be possiblethrough other channels. Acquirgys Brechner points to

brands like Keurig and Western Union, which havemade recent moves into DRTV, and believes that morewill be jumping into the area.

DRTV is a superior medium to tell the story, dem-onstrate a product, and provide testimonials, becauseof the length of the commercial, whether one or twominutes or 28.5-minute infomercials, says Brechner,who adds that even though digital channels have madetracking DRTV more challenging, it still remains oneof the best options for marketers under pressure toprove ROI. Thats one of the things weve really beenworking on: ways to create successful infomercialswith high production values and good branding, butstill enough direct response to generate sales.

He gives the example of a long-form DRTVcampaign Acquirgy recently rolled out forHoover, built around the concept of a house inwhich every room was dirty and various com-pany products helped restore it to cleanliness.

While it used the memorable demonstrationsfamiliar to infomercial viewers, it also added

branding elements such as going through fourdecades of Hoover products.

The extreme demos and Hoovers DirtyHouse drove home our unique selling prop-osition, and the compelling consumer offerdrove both online and retail salesexactlywhat we planned, says Brian Kirkendall,VP of marketing for Hoover.

In th is way, DRTV is an increasingly

attractive option even for marketers trying to reachyounger audiences who are more likely to be using thelatest-and-greatest smartphones and tablets.

Pat McLean, VP of dig ital brand strategies for Capi-

tal One, emphasizes that the banks goal through itsDRTV efforts has been, to take this direct responseengagement model to a more affluent crowd in a younger and more tech-savvy demographic. Headds that this audience makes a statement about our

brand, that were digitally forward-thinking and havethe type of brand and type of product that is relevantto that more tech-savvy crowd.

Providing incentives valuable to prospects is vitalto ensuring this sort of engagement, according toMcLean. To create these incentives, Capital One be-gan using Viggle, a loyalty program for television thatrewards individuals who check in to shows theyre

watching. The program launched earlier this year withCapital One, along with Pepsi, Gatorade, and othermajor brands serving as strategic partners. Viewerswatching various TV content are directed to unlockadditional Capital One content thats related to whattheyre seeing.

The best example of this interaction was during theNCAA basketball tournament when we were heavyin DRTV weight and had a heavy presence on Vig-gle, says McLean. As Viggle users interacted duringthe NCAA, they were exposed to additional contentsponsored by Capital One [and] related to the tour-namenttrivia and so onthat allowed them to earmore Viggle points.

Weaving DRTV into standardprogrammingNarrative DRTV ads with high production values canalso drive viewers to branded websites, continuing theoffline experience online. To engage prospects, mark-eting analytics f irm Turn Inc. used a cliffhanger narra-tive for its high-profile B2B DRTV spot during the June10 Mad Men season finale. Knowing the shows audi-ence includes marketing executives, Turns DRTV spotalso provided data for a case study on its cross-channelanalytics platform.

The spot, developed with Turns agency of recordGyro, used a 1960s ad agency setting and a narrativeof a woman angrily shooting at her cheating man toemphasize the 10-millisecond speed of Turns platformThe spot directed viewers to the microsite turn.com/decision where they could view three alternate end-ings to the spot, read a diary on the making of the film,and were prompted to enter their email addresses toreceive further information.

Its hard to explain the technology of what we doto someone who doesnt understand it, so being ableto take the idea and apply it to something people canidentify in the real world makes that connection forthe customer, says Paul Alfieri, VP of global market-ing for Turn Inc.


5/6


6/6

Turn will draft a case study on the spot using itsown analytical tools to measure the ads impact, andthen make that available to prospects. While the TVspot was a one-time campaign piece, the company

approached it as part of a multichannel B2B marketing push. Were looking at this as a fully integrated pack-age with TV, online, and a lso PR and social, a ll work-ing in concert to do this. We need to have all thoseelements there, Alfieri says.

Tracking troubles rear their headPerhaps the biggest challenge for DRTV marketersoperating in a digita l world is the muddling effect thatonline ordering has had on tracking efforts. For mostof its history, DRTV drove consumers to place ordersthrough an easily-tracked phone number that varieddepending on the time and station that ran the ad.

That was a very easy business model from an attribution standpoint, says Rob Medved, CEO of Cannella Response Television. Marketers and agen-cies could easily evaluate the media based on the reve-nue or orders or whatever measurement was triggering the response for that individual piece of media.

The Internet, before it became standard in house-holds, initially had only a modest impact on the DRTVindustry. Medved estimates that about 15% of revenuecame in through the Web. But as consumers becameincreasingly comfortable with online ordering, thepercentage of online revenue also increased; now 50%of orders occur online instead of via the phone.

Marketers dont know how to attribute those onlinesales back to a specific piece on TV, so they put it backin as a single line item, he says.

Digital attribution can be easier in limited or localmarket media, where a team can review the zip codesof the order files or the IP addresses of where the ordercame from to get a better sense of attribution. But in

broader campaigns, spending goes beyond individualpieces of media.

A popular solution to this has been to add a back-slash to the on-screen URL, such as taebo.com/tbs for a Taebo commercial that runs on TBS. But this has metwith mixed results as most consumers tend to inputthe basic URL and ignore anyth ing after .com.

Hoveround experienced th is so it now uses a uniquetoll-free number but just a general URL for each of its 60- and 120-second short-form spots, encouraging viewers to call and order one of the companys wheel-chairs or vehicles. Hoveround made this decision afterworking with Mercury Media and iMarketing LTDto track SEM efforts, and noticing that when it usedunique URLs, conversion rates dropped.

We still felt that for our audience it might be a littletoo much for them to type it in, Hilton says. We findwe get more response if we keep it simplesort of oneplus one equals three.

Infoworx Directs Perlstein says hes seen some mark-eters go even further and remove the URL from their

spots altogether. As a marketer, we want phone callsthey convert at a much higher rate if you have a liveagentso we have several offers now in which we donhave a URL, he says. I was at the gym yesterday

and saw one of the most famous exercise equipmentads with no URL.Conversely, Acquirgy placed directives at the front

of the URL, such as tbs.taebo.com, which resulted in a greater number of viewers who type the unique URLinto their browser.

An additional cha llenge is the shift to mobile phone. Whereas traditional landline phones provided a mark-eter with clear geographic and even socioeconomic insights into individual customers just by their area code,thats no longer the case, as individuals can move toany part of the country and still use a number theymay have gotten years ago.

DRTV used to be, Lets drop an 800-number onan extended TV ad and get [customers] to take imme-diate action relative to our product or service, saysCapital Ones McLean, whose company has beenusing DRTV to promote its mobile apps and features.If you think about peoples behavior today, most aresitting with the second screen as theyre watching television, so we have to think about the opportunity thatprovides in terms of extending the message.

According to the recent report The MultiscreenMarketer from the Interactive Advertising Bureau(IAB), television viewership decreases as viewers gaiaccess to more screens. Consumers with just a televi-sion and computer now do 87% of their viewing of TVcontent (as opposed to online video) on a television,those who also have a tablet and smartphone do just69% of their TV viewing on a TV set.

Conversely, the impact of TV commercials actuallygrows with more screens. While 42% of two-screenviewers (consumers that view content on a televisionand a computer) say they are likely to recall advertiserson a favorite show, that figure rose to 46% for three-screen viewers (consumers of content on, for instancea mobile handset, a computer, and a television), and53% for four-screen viewers.

To track the impact of its DRTV spots, Mercurylooks at how many unique hits it gets on the clients tar-get website. This allows them to gauge when the Webhits came in, and line them up when the spots aired.

Still, the need for a cross-channel solution to measureaudiences across multiple screens is considerable. Infact, Nikesh Arora, Googles SVP and Chief BusinessOfficer, singled out this demand during the companys

April quarterly cal l. Our clients and partners wantcomplete solutions that work across all screens: desk-top, mobile, tablet, andtelevision. n

To read an exclusive interview with Kevin Harring year veteran of DRTV and the chairman and foundGoods Inc., about the future of DRTV, please visicom/harrington.

Hoverounds short-form DRTV spots urgeviewers to call to orderits products


MAIN FEATURE

most

[people]are sittingwith thesecondscreen astheyrewatchingTV.

Pat McLeanVP of digital brandstrategies, Capital One

TV de Respuesta Directa

Documents

Transcript of TV de Respuesta Directa