The emergence of DRTV into traditional brand marketing.

Expanding the horizons of DRTV into consumer brand marketing? How can that happen when direct marketers and consumer brand managers don't understand each other?

Let's start with the core issue. Direct marketing agencies (and other direct marketing suppliers) are wildly enthused about

getting a piece of the big budgets of the big name consumer brands. At the same time, the brand management world has a rapidly growing interest in the mysterious new world of direct marketing (a.k.a. marketing one-to-one, relationship marketing, database marketing, target marketing, differential marketing or whatever buzzword you've recently encountered). Whatever label you place on it, the brand 'marketing world's interest in this more targeted approach was fully evident at The DMA's first-ever Brand Marketing Conference in January of this year. Over 200 people attended, with a healthy representation from brand management from many well-known Fortune 500 companies in the audience.

Since we have two groups so intensely interested in each other, one would think the situation ripe for a merging of the two, no? Unfortunately, "no" is correct. How could that be?

The answer is really quite simple. The worlds of direct marketing and consumer brand marketing are completely different. That holds true whether you're talking about TV, direct mail, print, or any other medium. The objectives, measures and evaluations are all different. The two worlds speak different languages and, unfortunately, there are precious few "bilinguals." Direct marketers talk about things like cost per lead, call, or order. They calculate and live by a concept called "lifetime value." Brand managers, on the other hand, speak of building brand equity and awareness, gross rating points (GRPs), cost per unit moved, cost per coupon redeemed, payout, etc. There are a lot of great brand marketers, and there are many great direct marketers, but there are very few marketers who know how to effectively apply one discipline to the other. Therein lies a huge opportunity.

It's not unexpected that there are so few who can apply "direct" to "brand marketing." Direct brand marketing is a hybrid set of skills for which there are few training opportunities.

DRTV - What it Has Been

For many years, direct response TV was the bastion of the classic direct marketer. From short-form to long-form to infomercial, the one common element was that somebody was selling something directly to somebody.