I started my career in marketing working in brand management on the Heinz Ketchup business. Working on a brand that was a household name and that had over a 50% market share provided me with an appreciation of the value of a strong brand. In the direct response industry, many marketers overlook the power of branding and the value it can create for your company.
In the direct response TV industry, the marketers that understand the power of branding seem to be the ones that are most successful and have the longest running campaigns. Brands such as Bowflex and Proactiv come to mind when I think of successful direct response brands. Having a well-known brand can dramatically increase the value of your company. Just look at Orange Glo. I'm certain the reason the Church & Dwight was willing to pay $ 325 million to buy Orange Glo was because of the company's profitability and the value of the OxiClean brand.
Direct response marketing provides marketers with the opportunity to both sell and brand their products simultaneously. If you can establish your brand as the leader in the drtv marketplace, it can help differentiate your product from the competition and it makes it harder for competitors to gain market share. For example, my company works with the leading ladder product. In only a few years, that product went from nothing to the leading brand in its category and knock-off products have not been able to gain traction. This was accomplished through effective branding and marketing of the product.
If you have a hot drtv brand, it allows you to branch into new product areas. It's allowed OxiClean to launch a full line of products, Google to branch into radio and video, Apple to offer video and Motorola to come out with new products based on the success of the RAZR. Last year Google's brand value increased by 46%, to over $ 12 billion, which represented the largest gain of any brand. (BusinessWeek 8/1/06).
In this age of blogging and instant information on the Internet, a brand can also be underrated faster than ever. For example, Dell's "service and quality were denounced by bloggers" on a popular website and this publicity negatively influenced their brand. (NY Times 12/17/06). I'm certain the publicity surrounding the recent FTC fines for some of the leading diet supplements has created a great deal of negative buzz among consumers, which has significantly impacted their sales and brand value. On the other hand, "positive word of mouth magnified by the Internet can be a boon, as Toyota discovered with its hybrid Prius sedan, which has been promoted on sites created just for that purpose." (NY Times).
No matter what type of direct response product or service you are marketing, nowdays it's more important than ever to build brand value through your direct marketing efforts and to understand how the power of the Internet and its bloggers, online communities, message boards, etc. can affect those efforts.
