By Jackie Jones
Despite a rough few years in consumer electronics, marketers in the space are expecting nothing but cheer this holiday season, with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) predicting a 17-year high in electronics spending. Shoppers continue to allocate more
money to high-tech devices, with 73 percent reporting they plan to purchase
electronics as gifts in 2010, up from 67 percent last year.
Direct response marketing has always been
compatible with consumer electronics, but agency veterans say more companies could see sales
skyrocket if they continue to hone in on DR
— most notably the strengths it offers marketers
when communicating with consumers.
“For success in consumer electronics’ innova-
tion, marketers will need to drive the sale with
DR,” says Doug Garnett, founder and CEO of
Atomic Direct and a member of the Response
Editorial Advisory Board. “Most of these con-
sumer electronics products, when sitting on a
shelf, just look like a box like anything else. No
matter what new service it provides, fundamen-
tally it’s a box. The trick in the high-tech world
then becomes getting people to understand what
makes this box different from that one.”
And this is where direct response should
become every consumer electronics marketer’s
saving grace. Advertisers need that extra time
afforded by direct response — specifically DRTV
— to communicate with consumers in this space
especially, according to Garnett.
“Tech sells boxes, and the things those boxes
do are very difficult to explain or put in context
with traditional advertising,” he says. “What
long-form could do for the high-tech world is
take those innovations and put them in context
for people and their lives.”
Garnett cites companies like Bose, Direc TV
and Dish Network as marketers who do a good
job of understanding how their technology af-
fects people’s lives and then taking the time to
deliver that message to consumers through DR
platforms.
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A Voice for Value
Comwave, a phone service and voice over IP
(VoIP) provider, is one such marketer breaking
into the DR space with its latest campaign developed by Northern Lights Direct. Comwave’s
campaign features a search engine marketing
