Thursday, July 26, 2007

Multichannel marketing fuels DRTV growth

By adapting interactive media and using direct response television for nontraditional purposes, multichannel marketers are growing the DRTV industry as a marketing medium, according to a new study from the Electronic Retailing Association, called The Evolving Role of Direct Response Television in Multichannel Marketing Execution. The report, conducted by the Winterberry Group, attributes the growth largely to DRTV marketers who are accelerating their adoption and customization of emerging technologies, especially in the interactive sphere of the Web.

"The consumer is in charge - that is the big message here," said Sieglinde Friedman, vice president of board and strategy at the ERA. "It used to be all about the call to action call, right then and there: 'Call this number: We're having a 75 percent sale.' That's an old model in a way, because the consumer is finding its product in many different ways and DRTV recognizes that. [Marketers] are much busier now than [when consumers were just driven] from an 800 number."

The report shows that the DRTV industry is being reshaped by the increasing number of brand marketers in the DRTV space, the growing use of DRTV to develop and nurture customer relationships rather than merely sell individual products and the increasing use of DRTV to drive Web and retail traffic.

"This study helps to reinforce that direct response is really coming to prominence and more and more marketers - larger marketers, brand marketers, marketers looking to drive retail and looking to drive their Web traffic and sales - are going to be adopting and considering direct response," said Peter Koeppel, president and founder of Koeppel Direct, a direct response media buying agency in Dallas.

"It also helps to reinforce what we've been trying to sell to marketers - Fortune 1000 marketers - who haven't maybe entered the space yet: that DRTV does really have value," Koeppel added. "In today's more fragmented media environment you have to understand different media channels and how they are going to impact on your sales and work together to build sales or build brand or drive retail."

The study aimed to understand the rationale behind the perpetual success of DRTV and involved interviews and surveys with about 100 senior industry executives in North America.

source:dm news