Radio, The Theatre of the Mind

If you’re going to take the stage in the theatre of the mind you had better be well rehearsed. Why? Because radio is the most easily ignored medium of all. You can be changing a nappy while the radio is on, you can be driving to Kinnegad while the radio is on, you can be jogging while the radio is on. But in all of those cases there is the one, singular, most abiding variable – in a fraction of a second your attention to the radio can be distracted by the nappy-needing baby, by that cyclist overtaking you on the inside, or by that dog snapping at your Nikes.

Radio is the most ubiquitous medium, but because of that it can so often become aural wallpaper, that drone of adds and chirpy DJs that can be tuned out of just as quickly as it can be tuned in to. Which is why, before you go on the airwaves, you’d better decide what you want to say, and more importantly, how you want to say it.

Because how you say it is the means by which you hold attention, and when you hold attention you increase recall, and when you increase recall you increase the likelihood of a response, and when you increase response you increase the likelihood of purchase. And if that latter is a run-on sentence it is only because message-absorption is a run-on cognitive sequence in which the audience carried through a proposition and requested to act upon it. But the first task is always “attention”. Lock the audience in immediately. The second task is “engagement”. Give me something to hook onto. The third task is the “resolution”. It can be either a call to action, a punch-line in a comedic execution, or even a provocative assertion as to the brand/products attributes.

This is a tried and true methodology. It applies to ads that are intended to create simple awareness, it applies to hard-core retail, and it applies to public-service advertising. Attention, engagement, resolution – three acts that always perform well in the theatre of the mind.

Sweat your best asset – existing customers...

Whether you’ve got 1,000 or 1,000,000 customers these days you need to make best use of the ones you’ve got. Using Direct Marketing to extract value from an existing customer database needs thought, planning, investment and data driven decision making. Here are 10 suggestions to help get you started...

1. Deploy a campaign management system with a reporting module. Find one that integrates with your back office processing system. This will enable you to :-
a. Manage your campaign database
b. Track campaign history right down to customer level
c. Use profiling, propensity modelling and segmentation based campaigns and manage your test and learn program (see below)
d. Stay compliant with Data Protection legislation and
e. Track and report on campaign performance – which you should do at least daily.

By linking your back office enterprise system to your campaign database you can also ensure you have the most up-to-date personal and transactional information about your customers – vital for a ‘segmentation of 1’ which is what all customers want.

2. Cut out wastage (and do your bit for sustainability). Decile your customer database by breaking it into 10 equal size parts in order of response propensity. Use a “test and learn” approach with a robust financial model to find the point at which it becomes unprofitable to mail if the response rate dips below the economic threshold. In most databases this will be around the 3rd decile (in other words, 70% of your mailing is going to people who won’t respond in sufficient quantities to justify your spend investment!)

3. Build life-cycle direct marketing programs. Develop matrix based “next offer product” campaigns for your customers as they move up the value chain – make each offer progressively more compelling if they do not respond (don’t always start with your best value proposition). Over-lay operational contacts on this for an end to end view of contact points – and make sure you are comfortable with the level of contact.

4. Mail each customer no more than once every quarter – a customer database tires when you mail more often than 4 times a year.

5. Protect those you have – the first statistical model you should develop is one for attrition propensity. Improve the value proposition of those likely to go – and do it now, or they will inevitably churn over to your competitors.

6. Test and learn. On every mailing, split the base into “campaign” and “test” databases. When the test beats the campaign, deploy it as the champion. Test creative’s, price, incentive offers – whatever is in your toolkit.

7. Upweight the performance of DM campaigns with other media – a well developed and deployed advertising campaign can deliver a 50% uplift in response rates –provided the creative and targeting are harmonised across all the executions. Use one phone number and track responses based on date, time and “how did you hear about us” questions from your call centre agents. Recall beats ‘nth’ degree tracking anytime. And customers won’t remember 20 numbers that are based on your different marketing media but they will remember one “vanity” number (or web address) consistently promoted.

8. Time your mailings campaigns. DM dropping through the letterbox on a Monday or Tuesday gets a higher response rate than that dropping on a Thursday or Friday. Stay away from Bank Holiday weekends (into or out of them) and slow down the output if the weather picks up.

9. Harmonise your marketing mix internally. Make your staff ambassadors for your brand. They need to believe what you believe to make your customers believe!

10. There’s lots more where this came from. For the best in direct marketing call the best now – DMA on 01-6671144.

Sweet tweet revenge

Oh look, I just stepped in Jam and its gotten on my trousers. Now should I post that on twitter? Or maybe my blog? No, too short for a blog entry. Twitter it is.

Why am I thinking of posting this to twitter instead of cleaning my shoe?
Probably because my computer is closer than the paper towels.

Stupid jam, ruined my trousers. And for doing that, I’m going to let the world know how evil you are. All one hundred of my friends will know of your stainability.

Twitter it is.

Re-tweet: hi, noticed your jam mishap. Check out my dry cleaners on East Wall, maybe I can do something for your trousers.

Huh, interesting. Might just do that.

Tweet: jam incident over, dry cleaner in East Wall is sorting it out for me.

The power of social networking.

Integrated, same message different executions

Too often in Ireland, and the rest of the world, an integrated advertising campaign just means taking a still from the TV advert and passing it off as posters, press, online, direct mail, etc. And how many stills from the TV advert make sense as stand alone pieces? Very few, I think you’ll agree. Just because you make a TV advert doesn’t mean people will see it, but yet those who haven’t are meant to make sense of a random still: it’s like asking someone to understand, in-depth, a movie after seeing the trailer—even then they get thirty seconds instead of just one frame.

A good integrated campaign takes the kernel of the idea, the core message, and applies it the whole campaign—even if it has a different look to the TV. People are smart enough to recognise the message your advert is trying to get across. Just because you spend the big bucks on the TV advert it doesn’t mean you have to milk it to the detriment of the rest of the campaign. At least if you’re smart you won’t.