Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing

Drayton Bird

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780749452070
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Drayton Bird's Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing needs no introduction to marketers and direct marketers. It is not only seen as the authority on direct marketing execution, but is also widely appreciated for its engaging, no-nonsense style.The latest edition takes the book into new territory - the field of digital marketing. It gives the marketer the tools, techniques and structure needed to produce effective and profitable marketing across the direct marketing spectrum -from simple letter to focused web-based campaigns.For anyone involved in direct marketing, from junior marketer to senior manager, this book provides not just the structure for success but also an energising insight into the techniques behind some of the world's most successful direct marketing campaigns.

1

Beginnings

‘Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.’

Roger of Ascham

‘The only purpose of advertising is to sell;
it has no other justification worth mentioning.’

Raymond Rubicam
Founder, Young & Rubicam Advertising

‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in a
fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’

Dr Johnson

In 1957 my situation was bleak. I was making £7.00 a week editing a small trade journal. Even in those dear, dead days when cigarettes cost the equivalent of 10p a packet this would not support a wife and child – even in the two-up two-down cottage with outside lavatory we lived in. I had to do something.

At the time, I was much taken by a smooth aristocratic friend who worked in advertising. He seemed to be making pots of money without too much effort and advised me to become a copywriter. It took six months using all my reserves of servile flattery to find a willing employer.

I had three qualities to offer, apart from desperation.

First, I was brought up in a northern pub with a widely varied clientele. Encountering very different kinds of people after they have had a few drinks is splendid education for life. One minute I might be serving a pint of best mild in the vaults to Alec, whose party turn was describing how his wife had gone out one day for a loaf of bread and never returned. The next I would be listening to a mottle-faced cotton magnate in the American Bar lamenting the Socialist government’s determination to part him from all he possessed.

Second, I could write. You may consider this essential for the job I sought, but this is not apparent to many would-be copywriters. An alarming number cannot spell, punctuate or write long sentences – let alone tangle with such niceties as ‘it’s’ versus ‘its’, ‘compliment’ as opposed to ‘complement’ and so on.

Third, I had read every book on advertising in Manchester Public Library – there were three – and enrolled in an evening course on the subject. You may also see these preparations as obvious, but not all agree: when I finally entered the industry, I discovered few of my colleagues had taken the trouble to study the subject, or were even clear about the purpose of advertising.

This ancient ignorance has yet to be entirely dispelled. Over 80 years ago the first and best definition of advertising – ‘Salesmanship in print’ (still valid if you allow for broadcast media) – was formulated. However, this fairly simple thought has not penetrated the skulls of many practitioners or their clients to this day. You find this hard to believe? A 1980 survey of senior British marketing people revealed that 80 per cent thought advertising had some primary purpose other than selling. And today many are led wildly astray by a will o’ the wisp called ‘brand building’.

Many see this as a comfortable state of affairs. If nobody knows what advertising should do, how can the content (or results) be evaluated? Under such circumstances it is relatively easy to make a fair living in the industry if you have a quick mind and an ingratiating manner.

THE AMATEUR APPROACH

I imagined this amateur approach to be peculiarly British until I read a piece headed ‘Ignorance is bliss’ in the 21 December 1992 issue of America’s Advertising Age. It revealed that 1,003 senior executives had been tested on their knowledge of marketing principles with results so abysmal that they would have done better if they had answered ‘Don’t know’ to every question.

This foolish sloth is pervasive. Over the years I have interviewed hundreds of prospective employees. I almost invariably ask: ‘What books have you read on direct marketing or advertising?’ A significant percentage have read none; few have read more than one or two. The following account gives you an idea of the problem.

Study the subject

Bird: ‘What books …?’

Young (but not inexperienced) art director: ‘Well none, really. I don’t believe in theory. It kind of, well … I don’t like to restrict my imagination.’

Bird: ‘Really. Then how do you learn about the business?’

AD: ‘Well, you know, you kind of pick it up by being around. You know, reading Campaign and that sort of thing.’

Bird (getting agitated): ‘What sort of thing?’

AD: ‘Well, working in a good agency, and watching what happens.’

Bird (restraining certain violent tendencies): ‘Would you expect to pick up brain surgery by standing around the casualty department at University College Hospital?’

AD: ‘Well, no. That’s different, isn’t it?’

Bird: ‘Yes. Everything is different. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to learn it properly.’

(Interview breaks up in disorder.)

Depressing, isn’t it? Especially if you’re trying to build up a business. You have to educate your staff before they become any use – by which time, I might add, they have become rare and coveted commodities on the employment market.

THE DIFFICULT APPROACH

Returning to my early experiences, I soon discovered that some clients had very clear views on advertising. That was because their businesses depended on it. Either they were mail order firms seeking agents and customers or they were selling products door to door, seeking inquiries from likely buyers.

Why results matter

They were often difficult people. They wanted replies – and lots of them. Their advertisements tended to be bloody, bold and resolute; intent on results at the right cost. They would tell you very quickly (and sometimes quite offensively) whether their advertising was working.

Few of my colleagues were keen on working for them. They preferred clients with vaguer objectives like ‘spreading our good name’. Even better were those who simply spent the agreed advertising appropriation every year in the way they always had. Such clients assessed their advertising quite simply: did they like it?

To this day many advertisers spend vast sums in the same slapdash way. They and their agencies may claim their efforts increase sales, but it’s not always easy to discover by what alchemy that happy result occurs. So many other factors intervene – like what your competitors are doing in terms of advertising, price and distribution – that establishing how sales are affected by advertising is very tricky. This gives occasion for many fanciful alibis on the part of agencies and marketers when the sales curve goes down instead of up.

A senior marketing man with one of the world’s largest companies once told me they advertise simply to create awareness. Sales were somebody else’s problem, I gathered. Many regard their advertising in isolation in this way; they ‘uncouple’ it from the rest of the marketing process.

Awareness vs sales Customers prefer coupons

If you ignore the matter of sales, you can discover many things about your advertising. Did people notice it? Did they read it? Did they understand it? Did they remember it? Did they like it?

This last question in particular can mislead. Some advertising is so likeable it obscures the merits of the product. Forty-odd years ago, a New York beer company called Piels ran commercials so popular the public demanded they be recalled when they were taken off. Unfortunately, every time they did so, sales went down. Similarly, for some years Isuzu ran ads in the United States which won so many awards the client kept them running despite the fact they did nothing for sales.

A puzzle

Why then, you may wonder, are so many still unwilling to use the only foolproof way of measuring whether a message makes people act? Namely a reply device, a coupon, phone number or email address, and many of those who do, fail to measure the replies – a sort of idiocy that defies analysis.

Customers prefer coupons

It is a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it? It’s a shame, too, because research conducted by Daniel Starch & Staff in the USA indicates that putting a coupon in your advertisements actually increases readership. All advertisers, no matter what their views, agree this is desirable.

There has been a remarkable amount of ill-informed comment about coupons and response devices. A great many sensitive art directors believe a coupon spoils your image. This poisonous myth was demolished for all time by research from Telelab in the UK on how customers – business or consumer – really feel about response devices.

There were 801 respondents. 38 per cent of consumers and 48 per cent of business people claimed they had responded to advertisements to request information. Interestingly, wealthier, better-educated readers are more likely to respond among consumers; and amongst business people, the more senior the executives, the more likely they are to have responded. A counterblast to those who imagine only poor, less-sophisticated people like direct response.

And what do customers think of response devices? 89 per cent of consumers and 94 per cent of business people believe ‘companies should provide a direct means of response in all their advertising’. 77 per cent of consumers and 61 per cent of business people think the mere presence of a response device ‘said something positive about a company’. 21 per cent of consumers weren’t sure what effect a response device had, and 33 per cent of business people were uncertain.

So 2 per cent of consumers and 6 per cent of business people thought response devices said nothing about a company or made a negative impression. This information conveys a message which I will put flippantly as follows: people who don’t use response devices are anywhere between 94 per cent and 98 per cent stupid.

A response device reveals whether people were motivated to act on your message. It tells how well each advertisement performed against others. And you can evaluate media by running the same message in different publications or on different channels or at different times. The Telelab research shows you can do all this whilst enhancing your image and giving your customers what they want. That can’t be bad, can it?

Why do people fear results?

This reveals one important fact which few realise – apart from the fact that people like response devices. The response device actually improves your image. Moreover, it was revealed in August 2006 that Sky TV in the UK had discovered 93 per cent of viewers had pressed the red response button during commercials in the first six months of the year.

To be honest, I think both agencies and advertisers are insecure. They are frightened of discovering that what they do does not work. Yet how can knowledge be anything but good?

I formed that view very early on. I hated being judged on the basis of someone’s opinion – be it the client, the client’s spouse (the case with one famous soap company I worked for), or even the client’s customers in research. I was dying to know if I was making people buy. Then, every time I learned something was working (or not) I could improve. This simple approach helped me become creative director of a well known London advertising agency at the age of 26, within five years of entering the business.

I became conceited. Soon I was sure I knew more than any of my clients, even the ones who counted their results. After all, it was my copy, was it not, that ensured their business success? Mere trivia like understanding management, or how much you should pay for a product – let alone the boring business of distribution – were far beneath my notice. I decided I would quickly make my fortune in the mail order business.

SOME VALUABLE DISCOVERIES

Over 200 years ago Daniel Defoe observed: ‘The mariner to sail with is he who has been shipwrecked, for he knows where the reefs are.’ I discovered several reefs when I set out on my first venture.

Don’t rely on others

A friend of mine and I ran a £560 ad for ladies’ hairpieces in the Daily Mirror. The ad ran on a Saturday. The following Monday we rushed round to our borrowed office, a little room at the top of a flight of narrow stairs. It was almost impossible to open the door. A huge pile of envelopes had jammed it shut from the other side – envelopes full of money.

We gutted them swiftly and worked out our likely results. Bingo! We calculated we should make £5,000 profit at least. Our fortunes were clearly made, since the fashion for hairpieces was just beginning. I knew this was the business for me: all the thrill of gambling, only you control the odds.

Having discovered how quickly we could make money by selling direct, we soon learned an important lesson: don’t rely too much on other people. Our supplier left all the hair samples our customers sent in next to an open window. When the wind blew them all over the place, we had a fearful refund problem.

The supplier was not put off by this mishap. He could see what a good business it was and d...