Companies Going Direct To Consumers

Posted by nextvusa on March 25th, 2019

You may know them as infomercials, but these days they are called direct response television – or DRTV. Although entertaining, direct response television are those 30 minute “television programs” that are really just one long commercial for a product. Shorter formats are one-minute to two-minute segments and run during advertising blocks in between regular TV programing.

 Why Direct Response Television?

 There is only so much room on retailers’ shelves, and internet shopping websites are crammed with millions and millions of products. For this reason, consumer product companies need to find alternative ways to sell their products. And ideally, cut out the middle man (in this case the retailer) and sell direct to consumers. It is much more lucrative to not pay the retailer their cut which can be as high as 50 percent to 60 percent.

 Direct Response

 The “direct response” in direct response television is just that. The infomercial is designed to peak your interest and during the programming encourage you to directly respond by a calling a phone number or placing an order online. The content of the informercial is designed to get you emotionally involved with the product, and then while in this emotionally heightened state you are more likely to purchase. With other forms of marketing, the advertising may convince you to buy the product with logical arguments, but the emotional attachment to the product will lessen by the time you get around to driving to the store.

 Long Form and Short Form

 Direct response TV production companies produce two types of programming. Short form direct response TV is anything less than two minutes and similar to a standard TV commercial. Long form direct response TV is anything longer than two minutes, but usually runs for 28 minutes, 30 seconds. The long form allows a company to go in-depth on product features and benefits, as well as use different actors to appeal to different market segments.

As a short form or long form commercial is run, direct response TV production companies are always measuring the audiences’ responses in terms of purchases. If sales are low, they will adjust the messaging or visuals and then wait to see if those changes increase or decrease sales. Then they will try the improved format in a number of different markets. Once the production company has optimized the messaging, visuals, product placement, actors, etc. they will then purchase national advertising time in lots of markets across the country.