“You mean it actually worked?!”

What a pity ordinary advertising doesn’t offer the same number-crunching gratifications as the advertising created by Direct Marketing specialists. Direct Marketing communications count responses and cash – meaningful measurements of direct return on investment. Forget “impressions” or “share of mind”. Show me the money!..
I must have a perverted sense of joy because one of the most fabulous feelings I have in my world is when a Direct Marketing campaign I’ve done scores impressive results.
(I know exactly what you’re thinking: Get a life, Kurt. I couldn’t agree with you more.)
Great results can mean a number of things, depending on your marketing objectives. Some campaigns are hand-raising exercises, focusing on identifying interested individuals (prospects) who, through a second-round effort, are converted to customers. Or it could be a campaign that simply begins or nurtures a dialog between a customer and a representative for the Brand.
Successfully achieving objectives like those make me all warm and fuzzy; a sort of dove-like cooing feeling. But my delight goes positively mezzo soprano when money gets involved and responses translate directly to sales. What a whooping, wonderful high that is, as the words you’ve written, the images you’ve chosen, the idea you’ve conceptualized and the medium that delivers it all produces profit. Cah-Ching!
And when that happens, I must confess, I am amazed. Thunderstruck. Awed. That’s odd, isn’t it? Here I am, a person who for years has made his livelihood as a specialised ad man, forever questioning the power of his chosen profession.
It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with Direct Marketing success. I’ve successfully sold everything from limited edition fine art to coal processing machines through Direct Marketing campaigns. Jaded incentive managers in five corners of the world enthusiastically responded to a 5-part mailing for a locally-based international hotel. Thousands agreed to sample a nutritional supplement in response to a series of press ads.
I started in this business working for Fingerhut, a humungous mail order giant in the U.S., whose initial claims-to-fame were Air-Flo car seat covers and the now infamous 100% polyester Leisure Suits of the early 70’s. (Your choice of Brown, Blue or Green, though they had much sexier names that, with my gratitude, now escape me.) Along with132-Pc. Home Handyman Tool Kits, Genuine Melamine Dishware, Faux Pearl Jewelry PLUS Accessories, among many others, Fingerhut mailings (and now online catalogues) have been absolute million dollar money-making machines.
And yet, when it all comes together and actually works, I’m flabberghasted. I was amazed when we actually sold luxury cars through a direct mailing for one of our clients. The idea was to encourage (with a generous incentive) current owners of the Brand to recommend others who might buy the car. It worked. I was amazed when a letter I wrote for a fund-raising organisation significantly out-performed their control letter.
I am eagerly (read: nervously) anticipating results for the test mailings we’ve just completed for another non-profit. Will they work, too? Their cause is very deserving, but will those who receive the mailings be so moved that they put pen to paper and actually donate?
As usual, I have my doubts. But that’s a good thing. If I didn’t fully appreciate how impossibly difficult this selling process is, I wouldn’t do what is absolutely necessary to overcome any inherent resistance. I have no doubts about the power of the tools and techniques I’ve acquired over the years. It’s just that I so clearly imagine the expressions, the body language, the breathy inhales and exhales, the unsaid “yeah, right” and well-worn, cynical mindsets of all those on the receiving end of marketing communications and start humming “The Impossible Dream”.
Perhaps my doubts are fortified by all the bad advertising apples out there, because there is a big, bad, stinking barrel of them. How much can a hapless consumer tolerate? Why even bother to sift through this marketing mountain of stench? What’s the number now? The average consumer is bombarded by up to 3,000 ad messages each and every day. How can any of them, much less yours, find its way into the decision-making part of the brain and then – and here’s the kicker – activate your desired response?
It just doesn’t seem possible. But (I’m smiling now) it is possible. I’ve seen the numbers. What a pity ordinary advertising doesn’t offer the same number-crunching gratifications as the advertising created by Direct Marketing specialists. Direct Marketing communications count responses and cash – meaningful measurements of direct return on investment. Forget “impressions” or “share of mind”. Show me the money!
Those numbers are both the beauty and bane of our existence. If we spend RM30,000 of our client’s money on a campaign and the numbers tell us the effort generated only RM15,000 in sales, well, that’s the “bane” part. The beauty, of course, is when sales soar above and well beyond break-even. This happens far more often than I ever think possible. And when it does, I’m in Direct Marketing heaven.
So I will continue to embrace my doubts, and keep a close eye on those hallowed numbers. Because when they add up to a fully orchestrated crescendo of happy notes, they are my pleasant surprise, my Ode to Joy. (I’ll also continue to work on getting a life.)
By Kurt Crocker, Creative Director
Drayton Bird, Crocker & Mano Sdn Bhd (DBC&M)