Disruptive Direct Marketing- continued

In an earlier blog, I mentioned that one branding website accused direct marketers of disrupting people’s lives. The comments to this blog saw direct marketers as the curse of the marketing universe. It was pretty entertaining and revealed that some general advertisers were feeling the pressure to deliver ROI on their advertising dollars.

I like the term "disruption" when referring to direct marketing. All successful advertising must ultimately lead people to make an unplanned purchase. It strikes at the core purpose of advertising in a free market.

For example, the strength of the Internet medium also contains a weakness. It possesses a low disruption capability. The advertiser has to wait until somebody decides to visit his website. That is why direct mail is often used in addition to digital media to drive people to a website.

Disruption, as some choose to call it, is essential. And the more disruptive, the better. It prompts people to take notice.

I do not want the prospect to feel comfortable when I write a direct response advertisement in any medium. I want her to feel uncomfortable as she realizes she needs my product. Otherwise, I have lost the sale. So, this disruption factor goes beyond the medium and drives the creative strategy.

Getting people to pay attention and consider your product requires disruption. In the scheme of things, people do not want to hear what you have to say until you show them that you can satisfy some unmet need.

Do you agree with this assessment? Or is this disruptive quality we strive for something direct marketers need to reexamine?

Ted Grigg
What Ted does best is increase response by beating controls, applying multiple channels to target markets, profiling customer databases and generally improving sales results using deep direct marketing principles. Regard Ted as your personal “think-tank” for your direct marketing planning and strategy development. After analyzing several hundred million dollars of direct response testing in all channels, he brings with him the knowledge accumulated from seeing what tends to work and what does not. Having worked on both the agency and client side of direct marketing, Ted understands the unique challenges faced by agencies and their clients. Agencies need to sell themselves and deliver sales results. And clients not only require results, but need ideas they can implement while focusing on tracking response using a relational database. If Ted brings nothing else to the table, by profiling customer databases and creating response propensity models, he quickly becomes the clients’ expert on their own customers. His formal training includes a BA from Abilene Christian University and two years of graduate work at Texas Tech University. For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, Ted developed a revolutionary direct mail format that beat most standing direct mail controls for this company. He also generated more profitable business for this firm by expanding compiled list circulation of less than 10% to more than 30% of total direct mail circulation within a year. (Insurance business generated by direct mail demonstrated higher persistency than customers coming from other media such as print and DRTV.) Ted’s plan and implementation of Medicare lead generation campaigns for over 60 regional and national HMO/PPO organizations combined multiple channels that surpassed some sales projections by as much as 60%. Additional industry experience over the last 30 years includes B2B or B2C for finance, securities, home security, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, government, technology, nonprofit, retail, transportation, communications, and multiple categories in the services industry. As the founder of Wyse Direct (a division for Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, OH), he successfully launched and branded a new technology product for Seiko-Mead by supporting a nationwide sales team with a predictable flow of qualified sales leads. While a VP of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, Ted acted as the direct marketing strategist who refocused the agency’s culture to attract new commercial and fundraising accounts. At the time, Grizzard was essentially a direct mail fund raising production operation. His leadership and team building effectiveness prepared Grizzard for the eventual Omnicom acquisition and Grizzard’s successful integration into Omnicom’s large group of advertising agencies. An independent DM consultant, Ted continues to write numerous articles and conduct webinars on direct marketing techniques. He also wrote The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan — A Step-by-Step Guide publishing it through Executive Enterprises in New York City. During his youth, Ted was raised in Lille, France with his missionary family attending French schools becoming fluent in reading and writing French. Away from the job, Ted is a computer geek, blogger and science fiction buff!
http://www.dmcgresults.com
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Advertisers Need to Talk About the Consumer, Not Themselves