Electronic Retailer - March 2012 - 30

SELLING IN A FRAGMENTED WORLD

To Cooper, a lot of complaints about media fragmentation sound like excusemaking. For instance, take the idea that mobile media represent a whole new marketing channel. Actually, she says, when people get excited about mobile what they mean is internet-enabled smartphones. “And what’s a smartphone, after all?” Cooper asks. “It’s just a laptop computer that’s easier to carry with you.” For now, at least, mobile is significant to DR marketers as a new customerresponse option, but not as a new advertising channel, Cooper says. Provided you have a mobile-friendly website – and you certainly should – you have pretty well handled the mobile challenge. Agreeing with that sentiment is Abed Abusaleh, executive vice president of media for Euro RSCG Edge, the direct response arm of global marketing agency Euro RSCG. At the moment, he says, “Mobile is not a main vehicle for successful DR campaigns to reach

consumers.” Text messaging from advertisers is generally considered a nuisance, he says. And while smartphone users are beginning to see some 15-second commercials that play before the online videos they want to watch, those commercials so far are coming from general advertisers, not from the DR side. “Someone in DR will figure out mobile [as a marketing channel],” Abusaleh says. “But it hasn’t happened yet.”

bottom line, she says, “but [marketers] get so enamored by the possibilities and so lost in their desire to be in several places that they forget the true mission, which is return on investment.” That is how campaigns go off the rails. If you are in DR rather than brand building, Fraser says, “You need to make money in all channels. If money is not forthcoming in any channel, you need to reevaluate your objective for that channel.”

Where to Start?
That still leaves a multitude of online marketing possibilities in addition to all of the campaign-management questions surrounding print, radio and television. How does a marketer figure out where to invest? Does strategy begin with the type of product? With the target consumer? With the budget? “I believe in a tried and true rule: Follow the money,” answers Eileen Fraser, CEO of consulting agency Vintage Marketing of Santa Monica, Calif., which helps clients create profitable campaigns built around infomercials. On the one hand, Fraser explains, “You want to be available wherever your typical customer wants to participate.” That can mean online, on the radio, by phone, in retail stores – wherever. “Follow your customers to wherever they take you.” How can you predict where they will be? “Let them tell you,” Fraser suggests. “Marketers forget that they can ask questions.” In direct response, as in many fields, the 80/20 rule applies, she says: 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers. “So find those 20 percent and survey them,” she says: “Do you use your smartphone to do X? Do you spend time on Facebook?” If you’re thinking about radio, she says, ask what kinds of stations they listen to. Print? Ask what magazines they read. But when Fraser says “follow the money,” she also is speaking in a cautionary sense. For most DR marketers, she says, “TV is still the big opportunity. It’s the anchor that sets you up in business.” Other channels can add to the

Shiny Objects
Acquirgy’s Chaney agrees that television is the primary driver. Other channels are important, but secondary, she says. The bigger the brand, the more that axiom holds true. For instance, Acquirgy currently is developing an infomercial for a well-known maker of retail household products. A social marketing campaign will tie to the DRTV effort. “The infomercial’s concept will play wonderfully with Facebook and Twitter,” she says. “But DRTV is still the heavy-lifting medium that drives it all,” Chaney stresses. “It’s the medium that will move the needle for a multimillion-dollar brand. Facebook won’t.” Her point, echoing Fraser’s, is this: “I’m in the camp that says be careful not to chase shiny objects at the expense of the bottom line. Brands that get too focused on chasing fragmented media lose money. Then they come back to traditional media.”

Lazy Assumptions
Wait. Don’t we all know that older people watch television and respond to DR commercials by phone, while younger people have deserted TV in favor of web surfing and online buying? No, actually we don’t know that. Experts say that the time is long gone when such easy generalizations held true. Chaney says that TV viewership is up, not down, since the national economic slump began in 2008. And as for computer habits, she says, while people under 50 do tend to spend more of their time online, “I’ve seen studies

569271_ETL.indd 1

electronicRETAILER | March 2012

1/27/12 7:40:47 PM

Electronic Retailer - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Electronic Retailer - March 2012