When it comes to the direct response television industry, the trend for 2014 will be producing commercials that are of higher quality coupled with an overabundance of toys.
Great commercials center on the product. The product is king. While various reports note that the success rate for short-form commercials is 1 in 40, others have stated that it is 1 in 20. Yes, the odds are long, however, the vast majority of those failures are for products that don’t fit the DRTV mold. As highlighted in the Scimark Report (scimark.blogspot.com) week after week, companies are throwing their cash in the trash by repeating the same failures time after time. Although not a guarantee of success, following the basic rules can raise your batting average to 1 in 5 at least. My company has been batting .400 ball for the past decade. We concentrate on what we know, venture selectively in new categories like Tag Away, but always try to stay true to the rules. It makes our inventors and product scouts that we sign up happier to know at outset that there is meaningful chance of success at the end of the journey.
All great successes begin with mass appeal. Television is a mass medium. Although there are basic demographic differences between the cable networks, each appeals to a wide demographic. Niche marketing is great for the web, direct mail and catalogs, but TV is for the masses. For example, Stream Clean cleans carpets, and everyone has carpets.
Successful products have visually, exciting demonstration. To get a viewers’ attention between programming to go from “what is it?” to “I want to buy it” requires quite a push and the demonstration does it. Recently we towed a 340,000 pound 747 jumbo jet with our new epoxy adhesive Mighty Putty Purple. I believe that was the heaviest on-air test of an adhesive ever done on television.
Another aspect of product success is that a real problem is being solved. Recently I was approached with a product that addresses the problem of nighttime glare while driving. Our research pointed out that millions have this problem and most important, the problem often prevents them from traveling at night and fully participating in life. Blue blocking lenses do work, and our military uses them to protect our freedom during important twilight missions overseas. For those patriots and the general population, it is a super important problem they want and need to be solved. And true to form our Night View NV glasses was a success out of the box.
Consumers are pretty impatient, and the best TV products provide instant results or a quick transformation. Often inventors bring us prototypes and we definitely try them all out ourselves. The first time I used the prototype of the Instant Trainer Leash on my dog, he quieted right down and stopped pulling when I walked him. It was a marginally successful on TV as it solved a problem quickly with for a mass market of dog owners. Maybe the importance of the problem was not as intense as we thought, but the elements of success were there to make it a good percentage bet on invention from a woman from Idaho. That is why we test.
As the Great Recession has made everyday consumers more conservative, the “perceived value” of TV products is ever more important. The “buy one get one free” (BOGO) offer has become ubiquitous and so has the $10 offer. Unfortunately a few years ago a major DRTV company tested the $10 BOGO offer very successfully, and the industry has not looked back ever since with a few notable exceptions when the cost of goods would not allow for the low price point such as the X Hose or Sobakawa Cloud Pillow. As the $9.99 or $10 retail price point also is a winner at traditional retail stores, our customers have grown accustomed to the pricing. Try above $19.99 at your peril.
The last ingredient of success is claims substantiation. In addition to testing by our team at Top Dog Direct, every product should be tested by outsiders. Every “as seen on TV” product that is carried by major retailers has been independently tested to get on their shelves. It makes for happy customers and for happy fulfillment crews that hate returns. One of the first questions with our inventor network regards efficacy. Products that really work make for compelling TV and go back to feed the other ingredients of success.
There is no exact formula for sure fire success on TV in 2014, but the guidelines could surely cut down on the rate of failure making 2014 a more profitable one.
–Bill McAlister is President of Media Enterprises Inc., an on-air marketing, manufacturing and consumer product sales and distribution company. Bill’s mission is to push the envelope of conventional sales and marketing practices to achieve a superior level of quality and excellence using a direct response television model. www.MediaEnterprisesInc.com
