Oct 11

Response August: Financial, Fulfillment, Festivities

Hey all. Yes, it’s been a while. We got our October issue off to print late last week — and here I am blogging about our August issue?! Yep. September was a crazy month of personal and business travel, on top of working heavily on the rebrand of Response Expo as MTC Expo, and the brand refreshes of Response Magazine and the DRMA. Both the Response and DRMA sites should be brand new by early November. Finally, here’s a look back August, which is led by an intriguing cover interview with Jean Vernor, who leads MetLife‘s direct-to-consumer efforts. Other features in the issue include a look at how the wider financial services space is using direct methodologies and our annual look at the fulfillment and logistics space. How did these — and other — pieces come together? Let’s take a look.

Thanks again for reading and interacting with Response!

Aug 30

Response August: Kiko, no! no!, and More Dough

Response August 2016About two weeks back, Response‘s August issue hit the web (and, since, most subscribers’ mailboxes). Yesterday, we wrapped up and sent our September issue to print. So today I’m taking a few minutes out of the day to get this post up and share some back story on the August pub, which is fronted by our cover story on global cosmetics brand Kiko Milano. The issue also features our annual look at the financial services marketplace, a story on how the marketers behind no! no! battled counterfeiters and won, and a feature touching on the latest trends affecting payment processing. Here’s more on each of those stories — and others:

  • I first met Igor Credali, New York-based e-commerce leader of Kiko Milano’s U.S. expansion efforts, at the eTail West event in Palm Desert, Calif., about six months ago. I’d received outreach from digital partner Linc for a meeting at the event, and during that meeting, the Linc team introduced me to Credali as one of its “star” clients. The story about Linc’s efforts to help Kiko build its brand in the U.S. — a brand that is extremely well known and regarded throughout Europe — was intriguing. When I returned to the office and started digging deeper on Kiko’s work in the U.S. — it’s online marketing efforts and rapid ascension in brick-and-mortar retail — I knew this was a story we wanted to tell. Fortunately, the crew at Linc and Credali himself were up for the idea. If you missed it above, here’s the link: A Beautiful Expansion
  • Another annual staple, our feature on the latest trends for financial services marketers takes a deeper look at the different variations of media — style, content, length, and more — that marketers in the banking, insurance, and finance worlds are using to reach consumers. For years now, financial services marketers have been pathfinders, leading the way for other verticals in showing how offline and online media can converge to drive response from consumers. That’s still true today. What are they up to now? If you missed the link above, click here to check out the story: The Dollars and Cents of Performance-Based Marketing
  • An interesting partnership between skin-care marketer Radiancy and leading e-commerce websites is at the heart of a feature that shines a spotlight on the ongoing problem of counterfeit products. At our DRMA Winter Bash last December in New York, I met Jaimee Given, Radiancy’s marketing manager, who shared openly about the struggles the company was facing with counterfeit versions of its popular no! no! product — especially on websites like Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba. She was working hard at solving the issue and had enlisted leaders from those e-retailers and more for help. The story you see in this issue talks about the incredible results Given and Co. have authored — as well as discussing the landscape going forward. Our Doug McPherson has the story: Beating the Bad Guys
  • The concepts behind processing consumer payments seem to be changing as quickly, at the least, as the outlets where consumers can buy marketers’ products and services. Along with growing e-commerce — and, perhaps more strikingly, m-commerce (mobile commerce) — marketers must continue to address customer concerns about security and privacy. And with new EMV chip cards becoming the norm, online fraud has become even more prevalent. What does it all mean? We asked a trio of payment processing experts about these items and more. Here’s what they had to say: Pay Day
  • Our monthly direct response TV and radio media billings return to the short-form DRTV space for first-quarter 2016 results. Once again — and hopefully for the fourth and final time since they were announced — Kantar Media’s changes to its Hispanic media measurements affect its reported results. Another slide — more than 25 percent — left short-form DR results at what we hope is a new 1Q baseline: $622.4 million. For a full look at 1Q 2016 short-form DRTV media billings, click here: No New Tale to Tell for Short-Form DRTV
  • Other key items in this month’s issue include:2016 DRMA Summer Bash
  • Finally, sometimes when working on my Editor’s Note column, timing is everything. Just days before I sat down to write my monthly missive, two massive deals shook the performance-based marketing world: Unilever‘s $1 billion purchase of Dollar Shave Club; and Verizon‘s $4.8 billion deal to acquire Yahoo. Want to talk about a lay-up? These two deals — and how they each spoke to the growing importance of how marketers are quantifying spend and success — were prime fodder to write about. If you missed the link above, here you go: Verizon-Yahoo, Unilever-Dollar Shave Club Speak to Performance-Based Power

Thanks again for reading and interacting with Response!

Sep 18

Response August: Dating, Gumballs and Storage Units

Response August 2015Since we sent the September issue off to print almost two weeks ago, I suppose I’d better get around to my quick recap of the August issue of Response. An intriguing, multifaceted cover story on Social Discovery Ventures, another digital marketer that’s found success by adding offline media to its mix, plus the usual array of news, research, and opinion, gives you plenty of reason to read on for more background on the latest issue.

  • At a trade show in early 2015, I met with Lindsey Carnett of Marketing Maven PR to discuss her client base and see if there might be an interesting story or two out there among them. Near the end of the meeting, Lindsey brought up a dating site client that was involved in sponsoring the international road rally Gumball 3000. She mentioned that this client — which turned out to be SDV, owner of AnastasiaDate.com and AsianDate.com — not only had added a direct response TV campaign to its mix, but that it was inviting journalists to attend all or part of the nine-day, two-continent Gumball rally. During the next few months, with the help of Lindsey and former MMPR staffer Elizabeth Maxim, I was able to interview Anthony Volpe, SDV’s chief marketing officer, about SDV’s overall marketing plan, how a sponsorship of the Gumball event fit within that plan, and put together this feature on the performance-based aspects of their efforts. I also joined
    Hanging with Gumball 3000 founder Maximillion Cooper in Las Vegas on May 29.

    Hanging with Gumball 3000 founder Maximillion Cooper in Las Vegas on May 29.

    the final leg of the Gumball rally — from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, via Death Valley — on May 29-30 (and what an event that was: I’ll just leave this link to a piece from Eric Mack, one of my fellow journalists who was along for the ride) If you missed the link to the cover story above, here it is again: Racing to Success

  • Our writer Bridget McCrea — who was freelancing for the magazine prior to my arrival in 2001 and earns more than her keep every year — brings to life the natural fit of direct response as part of financial services marketers’ performance-based arsenal. For a long time, the financial services space — from local payday loan shops all the way up to multinational investment firms — have been leaders in using DR, and as services (especially online services) expand their power in the market, it’s no surprise that the financial space remains one of the most innovative users of performance-based tactics. If you didn’t already click the link above — here it is: Cracking the Code
  • Our monthly direct response TV and radio media billings recap takes a look at the first short-form DRTV results of 2015 — and some of you might want to look away. With a 12.8-percent decline, 1Q 2015 results were rather similar to the prior three-month period — 4Q 2014 numbers fell 12.7 percent. Total spending in 1Q 2015 short-form billings was the lowest recorded in any first quarter by Response since 2006. The results were intriguing in light of conversations I had during a recent visit to New York, where I met with a number of agency and network leaders. The buzz about the battle over what exactly constitutes a direct response TV campaign in 2015 was massive — and these reported results don’t exactly give lie to that buzz. For a more in-depth look at 1Q 2015 short-form DRTV media billings, click here: A Rough Start
  • If you remember one thing from my August Editor’s Note column, I’d suggest this: never fill up a 10×10 storage unit with 40-plus years of your life unless you want to spend four consecutive weekends clearing through its contents. If you missed the link to the column above, here it is once again: Slowing Down … to Pick Up Your Sales Pace

Thanks again for reading and interacting with Response!