form process and working with a director,
you have to ask questions like: Did you
get the phone shot? Did you clearly articulate the offer? That can put constraints
on creative types who just like to make
good, funny work.”
To work through that challenge,
Robinson says her team puts a strong emphasis on pre-production meetings where
boards are laid out, and the intersection
of copy and the specific scenes are analyzed and tweaked. In return for that extra
effort, she says Boost Mobile has racked
up significant successes in the short-form
realm, all the while benefiting from the
ability to measure its efforts based on
Web sites and toll-free calls.
“The top benefit of short-form is that
we can actually measure the results,” says
Robinson. “We’ve also improved our ability to drive both our brand and a clear
product message for whatever we’re selling at that particular point in time.”
Short-Form Explosion
As an increasing number of brand
advertisers add short-form DRTV to
their marketing portfolios, producers are
continually coming up with new ways to
maximize their clients’ production and
media dollars. Whether that means uploading a portion of a short-form show to
You Tube, creating integrated campaigns
that include other forms of media, or
adding elements like DRTV radio to the
mix, the overall goal is to gain more reach
and attention through multiple channels whose main engine is the short-form
itself.
According to Robert B. Yallen, president and COO at Inter/Media Group
of Companies in Encino, Calif., and a
member of the Response Editorial Advisory Board, brand-centric marketers are
attracted to DRTV for its lower rates,
longer unit lengths and DR elements.
However, he believes that the majority of
larger brands still have not embraced the
industry, and are being held back by traditional agencies.
“The typical brands’ agencies of
records are threatened by a medium that
they don’t understand, are not willing to
embrace, is much more labor intensive,
and is able to accurately measure their
creative executions and media plans,” says
Yallen. “What many mainstream agencies fail to realize is that the brand world
and the DR universe can co-exist. In fact,
every dollar spent on direct response is a
brand dollar; it’s just how you position the
brand in the creative executions.”
Last year, for example, Yallen’s firm
produced a 60-second spot for UbiSoft’s
My Word Coach. Designed to be more
Vonage tested three different short-form
campaigns recently, including the one
pictured here, for its telephone service.
informative and demonstrative than the
30-second brand spot produced by the
marketer’s brand agency, the short-form
creative centered around driving retail
sales. “Results were excellent,” says Yallen, “and the spot won awards, including
a Platinum Ava Award.”
When producing these types of brand
spots, Yallen says his team focuses on a
unified theme across all channels, and
sticks to spots in the 15-, 30- or 60-
second range. The spots must have the
feel of a national brand, he adds, and as
such are produced on film or HD video.
The emphasis is typically on “creating
urgency” and encouraging the viewer to
buy through the direct channel (inbound
telemarketing or Web).
Brand marketers seem to be enjoying
the benefits of that “urgency,” and are
reaping the rewards of it. TransUnion Interactive of Chicago (Response, January),
for example, finds short-form to be an efficient and effective way to reach a broad
audience, increase brand awareness and
drive immediate purchases of its credit
and information management services.
“Short-form DRTV is the most efficient way for us to buy into the TV
channel,” says Lucy Duni, TransUnion’s
vice president of marketing. “Over time,
we’ve worked toward refining a model for
this channel.” Duni says the company’s
overall goal with short-form is to drive
consumers to a company Web site, where
they can learn more and purchase the
firm’s subscription service.
TransUnion’s objectives in the production process are threefold: create
interest and desire; associate that desire
with the brand; have consumers remember the brand and how to find the company on the Web. The challenge, says
Duni, is getting all of that done in a short
timeframe that doesn’t allow the luxury of
repeating a message several times during
a 30-minute window (as an infomercial
would).
“By establishing our brand and our
main message in the short-form time
frame, we’re able to get the viewer to
remember our name and visit our Web
site, where the product features can be explained in greater detail,” says Duni, who
believes that DRTV can deliver a sophisticated message and build brand too. “It
gives you the opportunity to extend your
message and ask the consumer to respond
in some way.”
At Respond2 in Portland, Ore., CEO
Tim O’Leary says his firm is developing
more Web video components to go with
every short-form campaign. “We may add
an additional shoot day with our talent,
and shoot them for the Web site,” says
O’Leary, who has also started doing more
