Electronic Retailer - December 2011 - 50

RICK PETRY

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Scarcity Amid the Land of Plenty
TV exclusivity and are released to retail concurrently. The TV ads are used to stimulate sell-through at retail checkout lanes. The disconnect occurs when advertisers continue to make claims that simply aren’t true, such as stating a product isn’t available in stores when it is. Such assertions violate the public’s trust and erode the entire industry’s credibility. Consumers don’t need to be patronized; they should be honored. They’re smart and they do their homework. They know when and where a product is available – and for how much – because they can find out with one mouse click. Must be among the first 500 to order? Really? Then how come when consumers go online they see the same offer repeated again and again? Marketers want their consumers to cheer, but such inconsistencies make them sneer. In that ensuing 20 years, direct marketing has evolved into a mature channel. It is now a full-bodied alternative to mass retail with the convenience of door-to-door delivery. So perhaps the answer to this dilemma lies in the old adage that marketing is all about positioning. Why can’t direct offers be distinct and apart from the configurations available at retail? After all, the big box and discount retailers demand that their product assortments be different from that of their competitors. Why can’t the industry take a page out of that playbook and then communicate, with transparency, to the consumer that a particular product assortment is not available in stores? This is, after all, precisely what is done on home shopping, where a specific offer configuration and price point, whittled down to the penny, is presented that is not available elsewhere. Consumers believe it because it’s true. Further, why can’t DRTV advertisers promote genuine limited offers that have steadfast windows that the consumer must take advantage of if they want to get in on the deal? Certainly there would be some additional costs in terms of editing and tape duplication, but what value might there be in restoring a marketer’s credibility, not to mention that of an entire industry? While there is a kind of delicious irony in the fact that scarcity mentality is, well, plentiful, its increasingly poor return on investment tastes bitter. Embracing its reinvention in the context of direct marketing may be the best way to combat the public’s cynicism and a belief that truth in advertising is the scarcest commodity of all. Rick Petry is a freelance writer who specializes in direct marketing and is a past chairman of ERA. He can be reached at (503) 740-9065, online at rickpetry.com or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thepetrydish.

A fundamental tenet that fuels direct marketing is the concept of scarcity mentality. Scarcity mentality views the world as a pie with only so many pieces to go around. Perhaps its most profound direct marketing application exists amid home shopping where the idea that a network is running out of inventory is used to create leverage with prospective buyers sitting at home squirming on the couch while they vacillate on whether to order. Throughout the ages, from the tulip mania of the 17th century, where collectors would pay a year’s wages for a single bulb, to the modern advent of the annual holiday rush on the likes of Tickle Me Elmo dolls, humans want what they cannot have. This explains in part why direct marketers have used scarcity mentality as a staple to try and entice buyers in virtually every campaign. When it is used effectively, it can be a powerful tool to stimulate sales. Hence, the chorus of appeals that take the form of “This is an exclusive TV offer,” “Not available in stores,” “Available for a limited time only” and “Supplies are running out.” A variation of the theme is the idea that a buyer can only take advantage of an incentive if they act within a certain window, resulting in, “Call in the next 15 minutes” and “Be among the first 500 to order.” There’s just one problem: Consumers no longer believe these words. They have been drained of all meaning and mutated into hackneyed clichés.

There was a time when “exclusive TV offer” actually meant just that – products were initially introduced to the public on television for months or years and, once they achieved broad acceptance, made their way to retail.
To understand how this happened, it helps to go back 20 years. There was a time when “exclusive TV offer” actually meant just that – products were initially introduced to the public on television for months or years and, once they achieved broad acceptance, made their way to retail. But the As Seen on TV product game has shifted in recent years so that mass retail is now the primary playing field. Consequently, DRTV products often have no window of

electronicRETAILER | December 2011

Electronic Retailer - December 2011

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