PM360 MAY 2010

DIRECT MARKETING

WHAT’S NEW AND WHAT WORKS
A new marketing breed combines direct and branding methods to move minds and market share. Today’s marketplace demands this type of innovation that fuses fast, measurable results with customer loyalty and trust.

Direct marketing is breaking down boundaries and redefining the marketing playing field. This seismic shift is prompted by clients that need to make their marketing dollars work harder and achieve more than ever before. Fast, measurable response to marketing efforts that clearly demonstrate a healthy return on investment for clients is mandatory. Establishing a brand identity that inspires loyalty and trust is also crucial. Today’s smart marketer fuses brand and direct marketing to simultaneously move minds and market share. I’ll explain how, but first, a look at where the marketing battle between direct and brand began.

BY JAY H. BOLLING, ROSKA HEALTHCARE

BRAND AND DIRECT MARKETING DISCONNECT Direct marketers have historically been the poor stepchild in the marketing mix. As they look for ways to demonstrate actual change in the behaviors of their target audience, they build their campaigns around calls to action and test their efforts to see how they’re working. These tests lead to campaign changes designed to improve the results and earn a greater return on investment for their clients. Their propensity to test and tweak campaigns extends into the databases they build as well. There is enormous attention paid to targeting the best possible prospects with pinpoint accuracy. Everything a direct marketer does has a level of accountability built into it. It’s a black-and-white approach that appeals to marketing minds that have a pragmatic, linear, results orientation that drives everything they do, each decision they make and each initiative they design. They are the hardworking, less-glamorous sibling easily overshadowed by their showy brand marketing brethren.

The branding brothers live on the other end of the continuum. Brand marketers work to create an image around a product that is, according to David Ogilvy, “the sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging and price, history, reputation and the way it is advertised.” A brand identity differentiates a product from those of competitors. When built well, it instills a level of trust that says this brand will do exactly what the marketers say it will do. Many of those brand promises are ephemeral and aspirational. Brand promises can make your golf game better, your skin appear smoother, your body look slimmer. Your work product will be brilliant, your sex appeal will be irresistible, your cooking skills will rival Julia Child’s. You will look and feel 15 years younger. Brand marketing is sexy. It is glamorous. It is powerful. It sizzles. But direct marketers are left scratching their heads wondering, “Where’s the beef?” There is no substance under that sleek exterior.

And that’s where the perpetual disconnect between brand and direct marketing lies. Brand marketers need to do more than create warm, fuzzy images around a product. And direct marketers need to build programs that not only galvanize action from 2% to 20% of the target audience, but they need to build a lasting image that inspires a connection between the target and the product in the remaining 80% to 98% of that target audience.

SIBLING RIVALRY
Product managers need and want to maximize the value of the brand and direct marketing they do. There’s no question that brand and direct must come together, but how? Setting up direct and brand agencies to work side by side doesn’t usually work. Turf wars, battle for budget, and inherently different approaches to marketing divide teams and make this arrangement contentious rather than collaborative. Another strategy that has been tried and has consistently failed is acquiring and attempting to merge brand and direct shops. It’s like trying to mix oil and water: they always pull apart. Brand and direct marketers are simply two different animals that don’t really coexist peacefully.

The only way to get brand and direct marketers to start playing nicely together is to tweak the DNA of both marketing hierarchies and fuse the best attributes of each discipline together to create the perfect offspring.

FUSION
Product managers need to stretch their marketing dollars a lot further nowadays. Satisfying the customer’s vision and/or aspirations and simultaneously satisfying the customer’s practical need leverage all the best that brand and direct marketing have to offer. What is needed is a marketer who understands the benefits of brand-building messaging, while also leveraging the call to action inherent in direct marketing. This direct-branding marketing maven blends memory triggers with response triggers to create brand awareness that incites immediate action.

For example, we did precisely this for Evista (Lilly), developing a lead generation campaign to get women who were recently past menopause to raise their hands and get more information about osteoporosis. While pharmaceutical marketers are often skeptical of “disease awareness” advertising, especially when they’re not the leading brand in the category, our integration of brand memory triggers into high-impact response ads running in women’s magazines (Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and Cooking Light, among others) planted a powerful image of the Evista woman. The memory trigger image of the “woman in red” was carried through to the fulfillment materials and digital assets, as well as the relationship communications that were sent to those who received a prescription to get them to continue taking the brand. Using a sophisticated analytic model, we tracked cost-per-lead and cost-per-conversion to prescription. Then we factored in the increased revenue per customer that resulted from improv- ing the length of time women stayed on the product as a result of receiving the relationship communications. The results were impressive.

The idea of fusion doesn’t stop with the marketing mindset. Fusion must extend to how you reach your targets. It is critical to seamlessly integrate many channels, especially digital outlets, with a consistent marketing effort creating a 360 degree “surround sound” approach that adds momentum to all of the tactics.

The evolution of pharmaceutical communications has reached a stage where it must touch the target audience on every conceivable and practical front, using an integration of touch points and customized messages to drive awareness, acceptance, and action and to generate new prescriptions. If consumers see something on TV that prompts them to go online (for more information), or they recognize it when they visit their doctors or pharmacists (providing added credibility), they’re more likely to “engage” with the brand. They may even imagine their doctor prescribing them the product and become highly vocal about this when they’re in the office (something current research has demonstrated that traditional branded efforts can’t do).

Successful pharmaceutical promotion of the future will integrate all channels—online, print, broadcast, mobile, in-office, in-store, advocacy groups, interactive voice response systems, even outdoor ads—to deliver the message(s) in many different forms and reinforce the desired action (ask your doctor about an NRx). This “surround-sound” approach creates an aura of communication around consumers, exposing them to multiple forms of the message every day—when, where, and how the consumer wants to receive them.

The direct-branding marketer is a dream come true for product managers because this hybrid marketer yields the biggest bang for the marketing buck. The attributes that make direct marketers so effective are built in. Each campaign created by this new breed of marketer includes a call to action, testing, refinement, and accountability checks at every level. There is constant attention paid to achieving return on investment. This satisfies the number crunching need for measurable results that product managers must have.

At the same time, the image-building elements that are the hallmark of the brand marketer’s toolkit are embedded in each touchpoint with the target market. This leverages every opportunity to do more than just talk to your target audience; it fully engages consumers and end users in a dynamic, ongoing relationship that secures business over time. This way, even those in the target market that don’t respond to the call to action are left with a branding message that plants seeds for sales to come as the relationship evolves and develops.

The beauty of it is that less time, energy, and money is wasted on friction between brand and direct marketers. The inefficient arguing that frequently arises between disciplines is eliminated, so all resources can be better deployed to increase mind and market share.

This direct-branding marketer is hardwired to make sure that all short- and long-term objectives are satisfied, the process is streamlined, and all channels, including online vehicles, are fully leveraged to deliver great results. The entire marketing process becomes more fluid, effective, fast, and successful.

The era of the direct marketer as the poor stepchild in the marketing mix is over. The economic demands of today’s marketplace have leveled the playing field and enabled the direct-branding marketer to emerge as the most powerful player on the marketing team. The best and brightest product managers won’t settle for anything less than this new marketing breed to achieve optimum results with each endeavor.

To comment on this feature, contact the author, Jay H. Bolling, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Roska Healthcare, at jbolling@roskahealthcare.com