New Wave Marketing 101: Fixing Direct Response

Direct response ads have lost whatever credibility they had mostly because of the products themselves… cheaply made and basically ineffective, then tied to the standard DRTV format that screams rip off. 

Add generally poor service… slow shipping, bad return policy, tricky automatic renewals, etc. and you've destroyed any trust between vendor and consumer. 

Here's how to fix DR:

1. Sell better products 
2. Make sure what you say in the ad copy matches what’s said about the product online (to the best of your ability)… better products should make this easier  
3. Spend some money on social media to defend your products, for goodness sakes 
4. Change the tired DRTV format, for example:
    

• Give the actual price upfront 
• Forget BUT WAIT and triple your order tricks  
• Give a full guarantee, shipping and all  
• Avoid the tired Guthy Renker model (or should I say “trusted Guthy Renker”)... look, they’ve made a lot of money at it, good for them, but GR has burned out the format here in the U.S. which is why their sales are increasingly coming from other countries 
• Avoid automatic renewal – the #1 reason why most consumers will not buy and do not trust you
   

Any takers? Probably not. DR has matured into a derivative ad form for a me-too industry built by so-called 'entrepreneurs' who are mostly cowboys.

Cosmeceuticals Vs. Tennis Racquets? Who’s Selling Snake Oil?

When it comes to snake oil, I think the people at Head tennis racquets have taken the cake. Even the most egregious direct response male performance product has nothing on these guys. And note… I am a tennis player, I love getting a new racquet and I want to believe.

Here’s the line for Head’s Youtek Mojo Racquet: “d3o Technology senses your needs during different strokes.” Honest to God, that’s how it’s written.

Let me understand: this inanimate object with no electronic sensors and no ability to change shape or density actually senses my needs during play? C’mon, this is snake oil beyond snake oil.

Let a cosmeceutical company claim its anti-wrinkle cream “senses your needs with new d3o Penetrating Epidermal Technology” and the FDA and FTC would start to twitch.

So, as I’m about to hit a drop shot I guess the racket senses this and what? Reduces string tension so I hit a softer shot? Maybe the racquet changes its balance point and goes from handle heavy to head heavy in an instant to put more weight behind the shot? And if I’m trapped in the corner and have to hit a passing shot, I guess the Youtek Mojo grows in size so I get more hitting area. Wow!

In another part of the ad, it says that d3o Technology “…makes passing shots harder and drop shots more precise.” Again, WOW!

Those of us in nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals are frequently if not constantly accused of selling snake oil. Part of the reputation has been ‘earned’ by spurious marketers hawking Blue Stuff and male enhancement cures and anti-wrinkle breakthroughs; but much of the reputation is unfair. All marketers, from Rolls Royce to the American Cancer Society, make claims that they are new, different, better. That’s the essence of the art.

Part of our outrage at advertising seems to be that we consumers will accept claims for products we like while laughing at those made for things we don’t need or use. Women like cosmetics; men think the ads are stupid: “Who in the world would believe that?” Turn the tables, however, and most women think that ads for the latest 5 terabyte cloud computing breakthrough are nonsense.

Even though I am a tennis fanatic, the Head people have set a new standard. This goes way beyond the people who advertised a cream that helps erase ‘ear wrinkles.’ Suddenly, that claim seems fine to me when compared to a morphing tennis racquet.

Here’s a thought. Instead of the Youtek Mojo, call it the Youtek Mr. Mojo Risin’ and claim the racquet makes you look like Jim Morrison (pre-junkie phase) as you gracefully run to make a fantastic shot… long hair glistening in the sun.

 I’d pay for that (and so would my wife)!

New Wave Marketing 101: Why Are Outrageous Claims and Markups OK for L’Oreal and Dior but Not Direct Response?

Think about this for a minute. Is there really a difference between DRTV spots and the way international cosmetics brands are marketed? Same outrageous claims, same 10X - 40X pricing structure.

Cosmetics from iconic brands like L’Oreal or Dior or Olay aren’t really any better than OxyClean, are they? Imagine selling an anti-wrinkle cream that costs $5 in the tube for $135.00. I did that, I’ll admit it; and cosmetics companies do it everyday of the week. But at least they market with some style, panache, compelling story, exquisite packaging and first rate service. That must count for something.

At the risk of being crude, at least they kiss you before they…

I’m conflicted. If Estee Lauder and Clinique can sell miracle face creams for 10X to 40X cost, why can’t I sell a miracle salad spinner via DRTV or a breakthrough meatloaf pan, for that matter, without looking cheap and sleazy and having the FTC breathing down my neck?

It's the sleazy history of DR, I think.

Here’s a test. How many cosmetics have you used or purchased (men and women) that actually met your expectations? I can think of a few right off the bat:

• Original Rachel Perry — great stuff
• The yellow Clinique moisturizer in the glass bottle
• Shaving cream from Wild Oats— Kiss My Face
• Queen Helene mask — from the 1930s, I swear
• St. Ives apricot seed scrub — not as good as the original, but still good
• Idebinol — great face cream, unfortunately no longer sold

The list goes on and on.

Now, how many DR products have you tried that worked as promised?

• Paint roller – terrible, still finding drops on the floor
• Magic Bullet – not too bad, really
• Proactiv (for my teenage children) – no better than a $3 tube of benzoyl peroxide
• Orthotics – waste of time
• Scratch remover for the car – stupid purchase on my part
• Hercules Hooks – sorry, Billy
• Swivel Sweeper – worthless
• Knives from anyone – I have no need to cut a Coke can in half

See a pattern? DR loses credibility because of the products themselves… cheaply made and basically ineffective, then tied to the standard DRTV format that screams rip off. Add generally poor service… slow shipping, bad return policy, tricky automatic renewals, etc. and you've destroyed any trust between vendor and consumer.

How’s this for a solution… a way out of the DR decline?

• Sell better products
• Make sure what you say in the ad copy matches what’s said about the product online (to the best of your ability)… better products should make this easier… and spend some money on social media to defend your products, for goodness sakes
• Change the tired DRTV format, for example:

1. Give the actual price upfront
2. Forget BUT WAIT and triple your order tricks
3. Give a full guarantee, shipping and all
4. Avoid the tired Guthy Renker model (or should I say “trusted Guthy Renker”?). Look, they’ve made a lot of money at it, good for them, but GR has burned out the format here in the U.S. (which is why their sales are increasingly coming from other countries)
5. Avoid automatic renewal – the #1 reason why most consumers will not buy anything DR

Any takers?

Copycats and Cowards – Why Most Marketing 'Sucks' These Days

(The survey I allude to, ok, to which I allude (for you grammar freaks), is coming on two years old... and still there are very few executives or marketers exhibiting the two core qualities of great leaders. More's the pity because, "things ain't getting any better... we need leaders more than ever" -- yet another Billy Mays-sounding truism.)

A 2010 IBM study of 1500-plus executives asked CEOs about the qualities most needed to be a great leader. #1 is creativity, defined as “leaders who are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation.”

If I can summarize, men and women who are not bogged down by endless analysis… they review the data, use their creativity and instincts, then chart a path without waiting for more information, more analysis, more PowerPoint presentations. Their courage to push ahead and their creativity to try some new, perhaps unproven approaches inspires loyalty and devotion and often results in bigger, more profitable successes.

I agree, but where are these guys/gals? Not in B2B or direct response or most ad agencies. I see copycats and cowards.

When is the last time I saw a B2B marketer challenge his or her agency to do something ‘out of the box’ then actually implement the strategy? I worked in B2B from 1984 to 2002 and now back in 2011. I’ve seen zero.

How about agencies willing to tell the truth to B2B clients rather than saying, “If that’s what you want, we’ll do it”?

Direct response advertisers/marketers willing to break the Gunthy-Renker mold… willing to try something new, without the BUT WAIT or the NOT 1 FOR $30, NOT 2 FOR $30, BUT 3 FOR $30 IF YOU CALL RIGHT NOW? Zero.

Copycats and cowards rule marketing. I can think of no other industry so derivative. If Popeil rhymed ‘Set it and forget it,’ and Billy Mays rhymed ‘Put the power back in your shower,’ then we need to rhyme, too. It’s a rule.

If Gunthy-Renker uses three calls to action in 10 minutes, then by God we need three!!!!!

B2B is the same. Copycat marketing that seeks to be 10% better than the competition. Not new, not different, just a little bit better… don’t dare stick your neck out and say ‘we’re the best.’

A wise man once said, “People want what’s new and what they can’t have… and that’s all they want."

I wrote “Better than Botox” as a headline for a DR ad because no cosmetic cream had dared challenge Allergan. Why not, I figured. It can’t hurt. If I don’t use it, the ad will certainly fail… if I do, it has a chance to succeed. Not rocket science, just Logic 101. The result? Half a billion in sales.

In this day and age, if you’re going to copy, don’t waste your time. If you don’t have the courage to try something new, don’t waste your money. If your product is just the same old, same old, throw in the towel right now before you get embarrassed.

IBM knows what makes a good business leader… creativity #1, integrity #2… traits that also make a good marketer. It’s no secret. Why then are there so few men and women with the courage of these convictions?

Marketing 101: If You Meet Buddha on the Road?

Marketing is full or irony. Or maybe it’s just a Zen activity that lends itself to statements like, “If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.” That’s a simple Zen puzzle which means, in essence, that if you see something you think to be Buddha, kill it (in your mind) because it is not Buddha (and it is keeping you from realizing the REAL Buddha essence that’s inside you).

OK, enough with the puzzle. Here’s my Zen/Marketing puzzle, ironic statement, of the day:

In anything you do vis a vis marketing and advertising, if the majority of people like the concept then it is not new enough and thus not good enough!

Chew on that for a minute.

The wisdom of this statement flows from several ‘facts’ about consumers, be they B2B or B2C.

1.    Consumers only want what’s new and what’s hard to get, they rarely want anything else.

2.    New, by definition, is something unseen and unexpected... the first iPhone, for example.

3.    Now here’s the irony – while people want new they don’t like new, at least not at first. New is disconcerting by the fact that its not immediately understood.

It should be coming clear: when you present an idea for a marketing strategy or new ad, not everyone will like what’s truly new and different because of statements #2 and #3 above. Eventually they may love the idea, but at first they will not; and to support their dislike, the fear of the unknown, they will criticise and naysay to cover for the lack of insight and courage they are demonstrating. It’s human nature. We all do it more times than we care to admit.

So, any supposedly new concept that everyone likes is, by definition, not new enough… and thus given #1 above, it will fail to capture the consumer’s interest.

As the song says ‘Isn’t It Ironic?’ And I can tell you that from an agency point of view, it gets hard to keep presenting new idea after new idea only to have each shot down, or worse, watered down until everyone in the room likes it.

Again – if everyone likes it, it’s not new enough, not good enough. Have the courage to challenge your customers and your management with something that is truly new. The rewards will be great.

Here’s a true story. Many years ago we did a series of proposed ads for a client with a product that measured the temperature on a circuit board through various stages of a reflow oven to guarantee that necessary levels were met and not exceeded and components weren’t either toasted or ready to drop off.

Our headline (which I still recall almost 20 years later):

It’s board #16, 515 through the oven… how do you know it’s been soldered correctly?

This was the clear winner of the six ads we presented on the day. The guy looks at the ads, tapes them up on the wall and asks about a dozen employees to have a look… including, now get this, the woman who happened to pass by as she was sweeping the floors and dusting the offices. Honest to God!

Needless to say he went with the concept they all agreed was best… we vehemently argued our case, but the client gets what the client wants (and will pay for).

The ad did OK… covered the cost of running it. The superior ad, however, would have pushed sales and the company image off the charts (the technology was first rate and could live up to the claim). The company is still in business, still struggling in the middle of the pack… probably still afraid to kill Buddha unless the cleaning lady gives them the nod.

Have You Ever Been Experienced?

I have – in the conventional sense and, I’ll admit, also in the terms to which Hendrix is referring. Sure, we all agree experience is a good thing; but as in everything else, too much is often a problem.

Here’s my history in a nutshell: 27 years working with words as editor and publisher of international B2B mags and a national consumer magazine with a circ of 450,000. US Director of a two-continent PR agency in B2B. Creative director for consumer/nutraceutical marketing company, helping to create print ads and produce TV ads that have sold more than half a billion in the span of five years. Published literary critic and short story writer. Adjunct professor (fancy name for part-time) teaching comp and rhetoric, American lit and world lit.

As musicians say, I’ve got the chops. (And by the way, I was a professional musician who spent nearly 10 years on the road working six nights a week.)

OK, so I’m experienced; but does that make me the best person to hire for, say, an ad agency or marketing company or magazine publisher?

Not really. In fact, my years of experience with their concomitant successes and failures may make me less of an asset: someone who rests on past accomplishments and has little drive; someone who focuses on how it used to be done not how it can be done; or worse, someone whose past failures (we all have ‘em, they help us grow, etc.) blind him/her to today’s new potentials?

I argue that post-2008 EVERYTHING has changed when it comes to marketing and consumer behavior. Logically, then, maybe all my experience is an anchor not a balloon.

I was reading a cheesy book about creative thinking and the author asked this question: why is it that older, professional golfers, those past 40, can’t win anymore? They can still hit the ball plenty far and are as accurate as younger golfers if not more so. Still, they can’t win… why?

Maybe because experience blinds them to opportunities during the course of a tournament. They can’t win because their past won’t let them conceive of the one shot that clinches the round. Or maybe they can still conceive of the shot but are too afraid to try it.

I’m just saying experience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be… particularly when it comes to this new era of marketing where past is not necessarily prologue… unless, that is, you’ve been able to maintain a young, unclouded perspective with the willingness, energy and curiosity to continue experimenting and learning. Otherwise, all the practical knowledge in the world won’t help you become a better 2012 marketer.

If you’re 50-plus, take a look in the mirror before you moan and groan about today’s inexperienced marketers. Their lack of a track record may be a big reason for the clever successes that leave you scratching your head.

Here endeth the sermon.

(OK, so now I’m thinking about the other ‘experienced.’ That sure was a way to radically shift your perspective and it only took a few hours… but no, I don’t have the courage to give that one more try. Some things are best left to the young.)

Corporate Hubris and Marketers Who Just Don't Get It

It's the age of empowered consumers, be they B2B or B2C... at least in the United States (so figure this is soon to come to a country near you, if the pattern's not already there).

In spite of overwhelming evidence my recent experience tells me that most companies don’t get it. And that indictment applies to large and small businesses alike. You’d think multi-billion dollar corporations with hundreds of marketing experts and social scientists on staff would see the pattern, but they don’t. Why? The Greeks had a word for it… hubris.

It’s really the same principle you see in play with some politicians. They choose high-risk behavior – nights with prostitutes, illicit sex in men’s rooms, etc. – because they feel they are powerful enough to be above the law. Of course, they never are, particularly when that ‘law’ is in the court of public opinion.

Companies are the same – and the bigger they are, the more ignorant and arrogant are their actions. And if management is post-50, only a very few can grasp the concept.

Three cases in point:

1. Bank of America announced that it would be charging a monthly fee for users of debit cards. Consumers hit the roof, then hit the Internet. One month before implementation (after swearing they would not go back on the policy) BofA scrapped the plan. Consumer power wins.
   
   
2. Netflix decides to raise its monthly charge several dollars and people are outraged. OK, says the CEO, then we’ll change the service plan from a combination of online and DVDs by mail, to just online. Another public outcry. Netflix loses 250,000 customers overnight. They relent but too late. The damage has been done to the brand and its bottom line. Consumers win again.
   
   
3. Now the fastest back down ever: A large US cellular phone company (Verizon) announces (just a few weeks ago) that it will charge customers $2 if they pay their bills online (and not through direct debit). Less than a day later, the uproar was so great the idea was dropped. Seeing a pattern yet?

Never in my lifetime have such large companies been forced to give in to consumers. Until now it’s been all their way and consumers could like it or take a walk.

No more. Yet companies continue to act as if they are in control. No matter how many lessons you can point to or how many times the newly empowered consumer wins, you can’t get 50-something executives to see it.

Nor do they ever think of the long-term consequences of this new consumer empowerment: how marketing and messaging need to change, for example, to address new consumer tastes and expectations. So they keep on with the old, tired message in the old, tired ways… keep alienating consumers… and scratch their balding heads as to why ‘nothing in marketing works anymore.’

Hubris… the downfall Icarus and Oedipus and Agamemnon and even King Arthur. The Greeks might not know how to run their economy, but when it comes to human nature, they’ve been spot on for centuries!

Dear Mr. Ogilvy: Where's the Enthusiasm?

If you read Ogilvy's book on advertising (and you should), you might remember his original ad seeking creative directors, which he called Trumpeter Swans.

Ogilvy was looking for personal genius, he said, and inspiring leadership. I like the imagery -- marketers as trumpeter swans: they want to stand out, and as I interpret it, they are enthusiastically creative and not afraid to flaunt it.

So, where are these swans? I sit in meeting after meeting with marketers, designers, B2B and B2C marketing managers,  CEOs, web guys, the lot, and it's like spending an afternoon in the morgue: no excitement, no buzz, nothing. It's as if these men and women are going to the gallows later in the day.

Marketing is 90% enthusiasm about your product, your service, your company. This excitement is essentially what we impart through ads and pr, etc. Passion goes a long, long way in marketing and in life. Why then is it in such short supply these days?

Marketing is meant to be creative, thought provoking and entertaining. How can it be any of these things when both clients and agency types are so low key, so ho hum, so boring?

If you don't have enthusiasm for what you do, stop doing it and try something else.

If I'm a company looking for an agency, I want to see three things: intelligence, creativity and enthusiasm. Two out of three ain't good enough. All three or nothing. 

From the agency side, I want to see the same traits in potential clients. Those who come to us with no excitement or enthusiasm, dragging their feet to the meetings, acting as if they're being forced to market and with no passion in their product offering or company... well, these clients will fail no matter what we do or try to do for them. Why get started and, as an agency, why get tarred by the brush of boredom these clients will surely bring? 

Two rules about marketing that have not changed since day one: frequency works no matter how mediocre the marketing; and, enthusiasm is the most important ingredient to a successful campaign or ad. 

OK, here's the third: start with a quality product or a superior service... quality breeds enthusiasm.

What Are You Afraid Of?

OK, I could have made it grammatically correct but then the headline would not have sounded right, would it? “Of what are you afraid?” Hmmm…  I don’t know. I kinda like it because it stands out and that’s what so many in marketing are afraid of… standing out, being different, making a statement. Particularly B2B marketers who sometimes seem afraid of their shadows.

I remain amazed at how many people who make a living related to marketing don’t like the profession, the tactics or anything about it.

Let’s start at Marketing 101. The goal is to stand out in a way that gets people to notice you… an honest way, not an immoral way (you can always take off your clothes and get noticed or swear at the top of your lungs or pull a gun, for that matter). The best ways to stand out can include FREE, a compelling story, compelling graphics/design, killer product, and the like. Mostly, it’s a combination of these things but generally centered on the story – the words.

“If people buy difference . . . what’s yours?” That’s the first question a marketer asks and it’s also when the story comes in.

What’s the opening line of the Bible – the greatest story ever told? “In the beginning was the Word.”

Tells you the power of story… God himself or herself or itself uses parables, psalms, gospels and epistles to tell us the human story. There’s Adam and Eve, the revolt of the angels, the tower of Babel, the list goes on and yet we know them all by heart… because of words not images, not film footage of Lot’s wife or John the Baptist’s head… words.

So, why do so many in marketing fear words and/or believe that telling a story is somehow evil. These people aren’t marketers, they’re ‘fact packagers’, pixel and letter pushers who think real marketing is disseminating data. They’re too naïve or stupid to see that facts ain’t really facts – they're mostly opinions on interpreted data put out by experts with an agenda. Yet, these fools believe that facts are unspun and thus truer than, dare I say the word, marketing.

Please get out of the business.

Why am I being so cruel?

First, you’re too stupid to see that everything is spun, for god’s sake even God spins, thus we have parables. (I’d like to find the jawbone of an ass and beat you with it!)

Second, proper spin helps to illuminate the message… otherwise why read novels about Paris in the 1920s (The Sun Also Rises, in case you missed it)? Why not just give me a checklist of facts? (I’m making them up):

-one million Americans moved to Paris between 1920 – 1930
-Hemingway drank in 150 Parisian bars
-Rue Kleber is one of the longest streets in the 16th arrondissement

The above isn’t marketing, is it? Yet THEY think so. Again, especially B2B pseudo- marketers who think an advertisement is a picture of a widget, a few bullet points and a clever headline: “Let Columbus Widgets Help You Discover a New World of Efficiency.”

I’m going to puke. I’M GOING TO PUKE (in the voice of the screaming comedian who wrapped his car around a pole near Las Vegas).

And clients, my goodness, who frightened them as children?

You can bust your hump coming up with a clever story about their product, only to have them say, “We can’t say that, can we? Can’t we just tell them that our widget is the one that really works (emphasis on REALLY)?

No, you fool.

Have the creativity to come up with a good story (the tortoise and the hare, for example), write the damned thing (oh, I forgot, people don’t read… you’re right, they don’t read the crap you’re pushing) and then present it to the world, knowing full well that some will love it, some will hate it. Fine.

But have the courage of your convictions and learn to live with the concept that not everyone loves you. You’re trying to capture a share of the market, not the entire market (not just yet) not the entire city or country or continent.

"Oh we can’t do that” was probably the cry of the first company prodded to advertise on TV or radio… or place their product in a movie… or use a billboard… always, always it’s NO,NO,NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Face it you coward: it’s not that, “We can’t do that,” it’s that you’re too chicken to do it… and marketing is no place for the faint of heart.

Those who push facts do so because they don't have the creativity and vision to tell a story.

Blacksmiths, Marketers, Wall Street Hucksters, Horse Racing and Zimmerman

In the midst of social, economic or personal turmoil, it’s human nature, I guess, to expect that things will eventually return to normal. The usual advice runs from ‘stay positive’ to ‘think long term,’ to ‘just ride it out, don’t panic’. All platitudes, all nonsense, non-thinking, knee-jerk, self-serving answers that sound like information but are really hollow, empty bits of noise.

Stock market pundits and Wall Street hucksters are the worst. Some poor schmuck has just lost 50% of his life savings and their response is ‘keep in there for the long term’. What jackasses… and that’s not the term I’m really thinking of… it begins with mother.

They nearly bankrupt the country, do bankrupt millions of Americans, take money from the government to bail themselves out, then say “all is well with Wall Street, this is just a temporary correction, invest again.” Bull – you know it, I know it.

Things will never be the same for Wall Street – never, which is why large corporations and mom and pops are holding onto cash. “But there’s opportunity,” some TV stock market shill will say.

I’ll repeat what my rich (for my family) uncle told me many years ago. He was a professional gambler and bookmaker… I asked him why he didn’t invest in stocks (I was a 16-year-old know-it-all at the time). “There are thousands of stocks out there and you expect me to pick a winner, when I can go to the track and all I have to do is pick a winner from nine horses.” “But uncle,” I stupidly said, “the races are fixed!” He looked at me as if he was ashamed of our shared heritage. “I still have a one in nine chance to win a fixed race.” His loving disgust was at my assumption that stocks weren’t fixed.

Let’s move to marketing… things have changed and will never, listen to me, NEVER be the same, in part because our economy and our attitudes about money and buying things and consumption of goods have changed. All the old tried and true tricks of the trade are dead and the only ones who don’t see it are the agency types who once made a good living from old school marketing. They have nothing new to sell clients, so they continue to run their mouths about how ‘nothing has really changed,’ ‘just hang in there,’ etc. These jackasses (again, not the word I prefer to use) are protecting their own skin and don’t give a rat’s about their clients. Sorry, that’s the truth. They are too scared, too lazy or too stupid to see the marketing landscape and the economic reality for what it is.

My pitiful analogy. Around 1908, blacksmiths see the first Model-T and watch their businesses tank. There are three possible reactions:

1. The world can’t do without horses, we’ll always be in demand, just let the fad pass (most people);

2. What we need is a better horse shoe, that’s all… maybe one that glows in the dark (so-called entrepreneurs, the guys who always seem to have a ‘great’ idea based on yesterday’s information);

3. Screw horseshoes, I’m going to learn how to make metal rims for the Model-T (the few, the smart, the successful).  

There aren’t many marketers or marketing managers in category #3.

I hate to quote Zimmerman (as Lennon called him) because it’s a dead giveaway of my age, but his 1960’s lyrics are perhaps more appropriate today… replace ‘senators and congressmen’ with marketers and agency execs.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Gold Coins, Math and Why Outrageous Claims Are OK for L’Oreal and Dior but Not Direct Response

A friend of mine pointed something out concerning a ‘gold clad’ coin offer he’d seen on TV.

The coin is ‘clad in gold', gold I tell you ---- .999999999 pure. My friend, a Ph.D., no less, does the math. Given the area of the coin, there’s no more than 1/2000 of an ounce of gold. Yes, let me spell it out, one two-thousandths of an ounce. Even at $1,500 an ounce (approximate value of gold at the time of this writing), that’s about 75 cents worth of gold on the coin.

And you can get this wonderful ‘investment’ for just $15. The old DR rule of thumb comes into play: charge at least 10 times product cost, packaging included. These guys must have another quarter in the coin itself and then 50 cents to package.

As I keep saying: these spurious products poison the water for all of us. It’s getting to the point where you couldn’t give away dollar bills via DR because no one believes a thing we say.

But then again…

Cosmetics from iconic brands like L’Oreal or Dior or Olay aren’t marketed any better, more honestly, are they? Imagine selling a cream that costs $5 in the tube for $135.00. I did that, I’ll admit it; and cosmetics companies do it everyday of the week. But at least they do it with some style, panache, story, exquisite packaging and first rate service that must count for something.

At the risk of being crude, at least they kiss you before they…

I’m conflicted. If Estee Lauder and Clinique can sell miracle face creams for 20X to 40X cost, why can’t I sell a miracle salad spinner via DRTV, or a gold-clad coin, for that matter, without appearing sleazy and having the FTC on my case?

The history of DR works against us, I think.

Here’s a test. How many cosmetics have you used or purchased (men and women) that actually met your expectations? I can think of a few right off the bat:

• Original Rachel Perry -- great stuff
• The yellow Clinique moisturizer in the glass bottle
• Shaving cream from Wild Oats -- Kiss My Face
• Queen Helene mask -- from the 1930s, I swear
• St. Ives apricot seed scrub -- not as good as the original, but still good
• Idebinol -- face cream that's off the market, unfortunately

The list goes on and on.

Now, how many DR products have you tried or purchased and have found to work as promised?

• Paint roller – terrible, still finding drops on the floor years after
• Magic Bullet – not too bad, really
• Proactiv (for my teenage children) – no better than a $3 tube of benzoyl peroxide
• Orthotics – waste of time
• Scratch remover for the car – stupid purchase on my part
• Hercules Hooks – sorry, Billy
• Swivel Sweeper – worthless
• Knives from anyone – I have no need to cut a Coke can in half

See a pattern? DR loses credibility because of the products themselves... cheaply made and basically ineffective, and tied to the standard DRTV format that screams rip off. Then add generally poor service… slow shipping, bad return policy, tricky automatic renewals, etc. that destroy any trust between vendor and consumer.

How’s this for a solution... a way out of the DR decline?

• Sell better products
  
• Make sure what you say in the ad copy matches what’s said online (to the best of your ability)… better products should make this easier… and spend some money on social media to defend your products, for goodness sakes
  
• Change the tired DRTV format, for example:

1. Give the actual price upfront
2. Forget BUT WAIT and triple your order tricks
3. Give a full guarantee, shipping and all
4. Avoid the tired Guthy Renker model (or should I say “trusted Guthy Renker”?). Look, they’ve made a lot of money at it, good for them, but GR has burned out the format here in the U.S. (which is why their sales are increasingly coming from other countries)
5. Avoid automatic renewal – the #1 reason why most consumers will not buy anything DR

Any takers? But in all seriousness, if we did these things could we make a profit?