Stupid Media Watch: Who has This Guy Been Listening to?

After sitting through a marketing Webinar filled with a little too much relationship-speak, branding consultant Eric Weaver last week posted a rant on his blog headlined “Direct Marketing: A Science of Stupidities.” It makes for some entertaining reading, but illustrates an all-too-common profound ignorance of direct marketing and its practitioners.

“This craft [direct marketing] is appalling,” Weaver wrote. “You are in a battle with the prospective customers you so desperately want to acquire, and you actually believe that, if you ‘win’ the battle against their desires, that you'll have a long, successful, ‘nurturing’ relationship with them.

“Same sort of mindset as physically abusive college boy/girlfriends, perhaps. I can hear the shrieking now: ‘I'LL MAKE YOU LOVE ME!’

“This kind of interruption-, intrusion-based marketing, even under the guise of being opt-in and permission-based, is an aging model that needs to be put out of our collective misery. You can't put lipstick (‘a dialogue with your consumers’) on a pig (an officially sanctioned SPAM campaign) and tell consumers the pig is beautiful and that they need to kiss it. Consumers are smarter about this than you give them credit for.

“It’s time to stop talking about relevance and start practicing it. Time to stop intruding and start attracting. Time to spell out a clear value proposition. Stop patting yourselves on the back that your unwanted communication got maybe a 5% clickthrough rate. FIVE PERCENT. And consider, just for a moment, the 95% that want you to go to hell.”

Actually, Eric, a 5% clickthrough rate generally means simply that 95% paid little to no attention to the pitch. “Go to hell” is a little strong. Direct marketers don’t think people are stupid. Direct marketers think people are busy and generally in no mood for sales pitches, even ones that meet your high standards.

And no, this is not a defense of spamming.

It is simply to point out that, yes, direct marketing can be less than poetic. And unfortunately for your sense of aesthetics, Eric, what people say they respond to and what they really respond to are two different things. What they respond to is generally neither funny, nor pretty, nor subtle. Moreover if, say, a cataloger were to ask its customers how many books they want a year, the typical customer will say “one.” Trouble is, no one has figured out a way to know which one. Also, consumers say they only want one, but then they buy from two or three.

Go Figure.

Are all the extras on your car only the ones you wanted going in to the dealership, Eric? Or did some nice sales rep maybe get you to add a little trim? Oh, I forgot, you’re the new consumer … in complete control and unsusceptible to crass, transparent sales come-ons.

Effective direct-response advertising is the opposite of Weaver’s understanding of the craft. Direct marketing by definition decides what consumers want by monitoring their buying behavior, the most accurate measure available.

Moreover, unlike some really crappy, multi-million dollar branding campaigns, a direct response effort that isn’t driving sales will become immediately apparent and get pulled, or its creator will pay.

“I’ve sat in countless meetings with direct marketing folks, and my point here is not to insult them,” wrote Weaver. “No doubt many will think me an asshole.”

Actually, “asshole” is a little limited to be useful here.

Weaver offers 11 steps to better direct marketing: mostly ideas suggesting that he has been exposed to some really bad direct marketers and that he mistakes bad marketing collateral for direct response.

Step 10 says “Be Real: Did you just use the word ‘solution’ in your marketing materials? Did you? You need to be smacked. Did you use words like ‘breakthrough’, ‘robust’, or ‘turnkey’? These words are so overused, so phony that they’re meaningless. The only people that *might* believe them is the PR department. No, speak to me in real terms, in real language, about real needs. Fight the urge to use fluffy marketing BS. She can see your combover, dude.”

Eric, have you ever actually met a successful direct-response copywriter? Trust me, they’re some of the best wordsmiths on the planet. They have to be, or their work doesn’t sell and people stop hiring them. You’ve been in the wrong meetings, dude.

Weaver’s entire post can be veiwed here: http://soundprinciples.com/ad-verse/2006/01/direct-marketing-science-of.html