and direct response. During that time,
he’s learned a number of valuable lessons,
including putting the right people in place
as the face and/or voice of a campaign.
“If you have great celebrities that have
used, understand and love the product,
they can be a tremendous asset in a DR
setting, but if you bring in a paid voice,
one that’s not a loyalist, it’s a lot harder
to make it work,” he says. “The folks who
The lessons Nutrisystem CMO Chris Terrill learned from DR campaigns at Match.com helped when expanding Nutrisystem from a traditional DR-to- call-center to an online presence, Terrill says.
embraced the brand consistently outsold
those who didn’t, it’s just that simple.”
A final lesson that Terrill carries
with him is more circumspect for anyone
considering combining direct response
and branding across multiple media. “As
much as DR is DR, you can’t underes-
timate the spillover effect of a good DR
campaign,” he says. “DR drives people to
the Web and other outlets, and for many
decades, a lot of marketers have under-
estimated these spillover effects. I know,
because we want to be able to measure
absolutely everything, and sometimes you
can’t. Just because you’re running some-
thing and it’s not fully traceable doesn’t
mean it’s completely untraceable.”
Terrill continues, “We’ve definitely
pulled back shows we thought weren’t
performing, only to find they were actual-
ly having untraceable effects to our Web
conversion. DR sells, but it also helps the
brand in ways you can’t always measure
directly.” ■
