Direct Mail and Branding

I graduated from the school of thought that any form of marketing communication (and even non-marketing communication) between you and your target publics is an exercise in branding. After all, your brand is comprised of the thoughts, messages and images that people store in their head and pull out when they think of your company.

But what about direct response marketing? I just came across an interesting opinion piece in the Sept. 2005 issue of Deliver Magazine (focuses on direct mail marketing). The author, Robert W. Bly, said:

Direct response copywriters...have a responsibility to do one thing and one thing only: to maximize return on investment (ROI) from every promotion they write. Direct response isn't a branding tool...Whenever copywriters subordinate ROI to worrying about the impact their work has on the brand -- or anything else -- they compromise the ability of a promotion to maximize response.

I went back to a previous issue (July 2005) for an opinion written by Steve Cuno, who held a contrarian view:

...markets respond to strong brands...though brand perception is not its primary calling, direct marketing leaves an impression among far more people than those who respond. While we might throw wild parties to commemorate a 4 percent response, non-respondents -- the other 96 percent -- also receive an impression about the brand.

I'm not an expert at direct marketing, but I suspect the truth lies in the middle: people respond to recognized brands, so leverage them in your direct mail, but focus your copy on getting the highest response rate from your audience.

PR and bloggers

Go here to read an excellent piece on "blog relations."

Ensight.org's super-blogger Jeremy Wright once posted on how PR people should approach bloggers--and used an email I had sent him as an example. Now, wouldn't you know it, I can't find it anywhere on his site! What happened to your archives Jeremy?

In short: make it short, make it relevant, make it personal.

Good bloggers get to the point in their posts, and appreciate it if you would get to the point when you are approaching them about something you want them to post about.

Don't send them content that they wouldn't naturally blog about. Don't "stretch their imaginations" too much. Look for blogs that focus on the type of information you are peddling.

Spend some time on a blog and find out about the blogger and address them by name. Do your best to make it at least appear that you know about them. Address them by name in your email.

Whatever you do, don't just send them a press release. If you have news you think they would find interesting, send them a summary and a link to where they can find the rest of the story.

Bad PR

I know a thing or two about bad PR. In fact, I got my start in PR at the WORST agency in the world. When we started Talon, we did so by "reverse engineering" every stupid thing we learned from our boss. Unfortunately, there are plenty of PR people just like her. As evidence, read this little snippet from one of my favorite news sources on mobile gadgetry, ComputingUnplugged:

Thanks for all the pens
In the ongoing mystery that is PR peoples' minds, we find, from time-to-time, weird promotions that make no sense. In fact, one of my many fourth-tier goals is to create a site called the "Bad PR Hall of Shame," just to showcase some of this bad PR. Now, this isn't just because bad PR is fun to pick on. It's worse. Small companies (and some large) often spend a lot of money on PR agencies and while we've had the pleasure of working with many great PR agencies, some others are very, very bad.

I hate seeing hard-working developers squander their marketing budget on bad PR. But I digress. Today, we got a letter in the mail marked "personal and confidential". Inside was a press release about something called TUT (yeah, we don't know either). And it had two pens. No software, no hardware, no Web links, just your typical promotional-grade pens. They're nice pens. Denise claimed the pink one and I got the yellow one. So to the folks who wanted PR for "TUT", here it is. Bask in the joy of knowing you got press. And, someday, let us know what the heck you're trying to promote.

Here's a simple rule: don't be a stupid PR person. Treat the media as if they are paying you to provide them with your information. Give them what they want, when they want it, and in a form that they can use.

Good Writing

I really like to write, and I think I'm good at it. I'll devote myself to writing a news release or article for a client and think I've done a bang-up job on it. Write. Review. Edit. Revise. Beautiful! Then I send it to my editor, Tracy, and it comes back hashed up with reviewer's marks.

One rule for good writing is to have a good editor. You are not your audience, and writing to your own satisfaction is not the goal--writing so that your audience understands your message and is, perhaps, inspired to action should be the benchmark. No matter how wonderful you think your writing is, you need someone else to look it over.

Here is a nice article on good writing.

Our new blog

Winning Rules! I really believe that...which is why I hate playing sports. I'm a lousy athlete and winning doesn't come easily--unless I'm competing against somebody on crutches.

But I can still experience the thrill of victory at my favorite sports--entrepreneurship and business communications. There's nothing more exciting to me than the thrill of scoring a big article in a major newspaper or closing a big deal with a new client. I love enterprise, and communications is one of the most important ingredients to a successful business.

What are the Winning Rules for business and communications? There are a lot of them...which gives us a lot to discuss in this blog! Stay tuned!