PI cable, TV household ad measurement in DRTV beta test

Last Second Media announced the first open system for calculating per inquiry (PI) rates at market values with LaserCable. The direct response television (DRTV) system eliminates prejudice from cost per action (CPA) testing networks and provides a direct input-output experience to DRTV advertisers for broadcast on a PI basis.

Under PI or CPA programs, national advertisers pay nothing for cable and TV broadcast advertising to instead pay only for each lead or call. With this new PI test bed, LaserCable further simplifies placement of advertising across today's fragmented media landscape by fairly calculating PI ad rates for small and mid-sized advertisers.

Cmedia Helps Columbia Records Artist Susan Boyle to Number One Spot

"I Dreamed a Dream" Album a Record-Breaking Success

Reality show phenom and Columbia Records artist, Susan Boyle, continues her march to music world dominance with the astounding sales of her new album, "I Dreamed a Dream." The album has topped the Billboard charts in the United States for two weeks in a row, and had the biggest opening-week sales of any album this year, besting releases from U2 and Eminem. Cmedia, a part of the R2C Group, played a part in making the album a success with an effective DRTV media blitz.

"Cmedia helped make our vision for Susan Boyle's new album sales a reality with cost-effective media planning and buying," says Kyle Sherwin, VP, Media, Creative Group, Sony Music. "As we continue to promote the album, Cmedia's strategy will remain a critical component to its success."

Extract from USA Today, 16 December 2009

Australian Charity wins international DRTV award

The Fred Hollows Foundation has taken out an international award for the best charity direct response television commercial in a landslide popular vote.
The Australian eyesight charity won the Gold Star Award for Non-profit Video Advertising in at the International Fundraising Congress in Netherlands last night, with more than double the amount of votes than the runner up commercial.
The advert, called 'Help Fred's Word Shine On', featured documentary footage of legendary eye doctor Hollows both at work in disadvantaged communities, and with his own children and wife before he died.
Coming in second was the 'What if' campaign by UK charity Action Aid, a child sponsorship ask focusing on one small five year old girl.
Ian Haworth, global creative director of RAPP, sponsors of the award, said that with the increased use of online video, there will be a new golden age of film, but added that charities were not presently using the medium to full effect.
The Fred Hollows Foundation was the only one of the four shortlisted advertisements, which included the RSPCA and Smile Foundation, which was produced in-house. All three other finalists, selected from more than 40 entries, were UK-based.
(from Professional Fundraising, 22 October 2009)

The Joys of Direct Response TV

TV used to be a fairly straightforward place. Adverts were designed to make consumers feel good about brands, move them up the consideration list and hopefully somewhere down the line help encourage them to buy the product or service.

But then two things changed. First phone calls became much, much cheaper - now only your granny needed to worry about the price of being on the phone for more than a few minutes.

The second factor was that now with multi-channel TV, there are many more channels awash with advertising airtime, creating a much lower entry point to TV for advertisers.

Putting these two factors together meant that for the first time advertisers could measure directly the impact their TV advertising was having simply by counting the number of consumers who called them. No more waiting for post-campaign research, recall measurements and the like. And now, with the growth of the internet, response is often to go online and search for brands or to directly to the brand's website. Various research sources show that TV has a very strong impact on search and that sites see a huge spike in traffic when a TV ad has just been transmitted.

And while the brand advertisers were happy to use the new channels in peaktime, daytime ad breaks offered the best place to experiment with the idea of measuring immediate response.

These ideas have caught on to such an extent that agencies estimate that the area has grown by around 500% in the last 10 years. Insurance companies, finance providers, travel operators, computer brands and charity fundraisers have all become regular users of Direct Response TV.

Direct Response TV is about exactly that, the opportunity for a commercial message to generate an immediate response. The ad will have a strong sales message combined with a prompt to call or get in contact via the web, mobile phone or interactive TV.

(excerpt from thinkbox.tv website, added 11 October 2009)

The Hard Sell: Cash4Gold

Florida gold traders Cash4Gold became a household name in the States earlier this year with a service that couldn't be simpler. You send your craptacular bling to them in the mail and they send you $$ in return. They placed a high-impact ad during the Super Bowl featuring financially troubled celebs Ed McMahon and MC Hammer pawning their gold baubles to avoid foreclosure. Hammer's gold pants, gold discs and gold sledgehammer all went under the hammer. Bizarre, witty and knowing, the ad was a big success.
 
And then came the British version. Now we've got Brian Butterfield's bald cousin promising Cold Hard Cash for our bangles and knick-knacks. Down on their luck POVs tell stories of trading in their skanky gold chains for life-changing amounts of money as high as £280 and, in one case, enough notes for "tickets for a European away game". Kerching!
 
The advert made even the commerce-hardened sphincters of Marketing Direct twitch. "Truly woeful," was their verdict, "a dinosaur of direct-response TV". All true of course, but the galling thing is the lack of a distraught and broken celeb. What, Kerry Katona couldn't do with a payday? Has Blake Fielder-Civil got all snotty about where his money comes from? You feel outrageously swindled. The British love to laugh at themselves but laugh a lot longer and harder at notorious screw-ups selling their eye teeth to put food on the table.
 
(from The Guardian, 5 September 2009, by James Donaghy)

What Advertisers Can Learn From Billy Mays

Famed Pitchman's Success for Direct-Response Marketers Still Eludes Brand Marketers

From Advertising Age, by Tim O'Leary (excerpt)

Mays' success reinforces many facts that direct-response marketers innately understand but brand marketers still find elusive, including:  

• Everyone watches DRTV. Kids, moms, lawyers, business execs, poor, middle class and the rich -- they all watch. DRTV is not a demographic profile; it is a marketing method and sales channel.
• Direct response is a valid approach to brand building. The essence of brand is not beautiful imagery or clever slogans; often it is more about consumer acceptance of a product's ability to solve a problem. In fact, after OxiClean's success, mega-brand marketers such as P&G and Clorox entered the DRTV world, often with products and creative designed to replicate what OxiClean had done.
• DRTV drives sales. For most products, the real miracle of direct response is its ability to drive retail sales, and it allows companies with limited advertising budgets to do battle with the big boys. OxiClean was a nice little company when it only sold direct to consumers. When it rolled into retail using the cost efficiencies of DRTV, it became a powerhouse that threatened the world's most sophisticated retail brands.
• People like to be sold. Brand advertising is frequently so obsessed with itself that it often forgets to sell us the product. Show us what you want us to buy, and tell us why we should buy it. Mays made us understand the value of his products.
• The only true test of DRTV is "live testing." Clients constantly ask about an alternative to a real media test, but unfortunately there is no replacement. People in a forced group environment act differently than they do in the privacy of their own homes. I can guarantee you that Billy Mays never would have made it out of a focus group, yet he became one of the most famous pitchmen in history.