Direct Response advertising has evolved in recent years; and as the media landscape adds new ways to engage and to shop, DR will likely only become more interesting and more important.
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Direct response in the digital era
Direct response advertising refers to communications seeking to provoke a very specific
desired action from the audience – be it an impulse purchase, an engagement with the
brand's content, a subscription to the mailing list, a phone call, an act of brand advocacy
and other actions that tend to be clearly defined by the campaign.
The basic definition of direct response advertising hasn’t
changed. But the ways of inciting the desired action and the
types of response have multiplied exponentially with the
proliferation of digital channels.
This type of communication has come a long way since the days of lengthy newspaper
copy presenting extensive arguments in favour of the response they were trying to elicit.
But even as the executions became more succinct and creative, direct response continued
to suffer from an image problem, often viewed disparagingly by both marketers and
consumers. But as digital advertising has become more sophisticated, and platforms such
as Instagram have become shoppable, direct response has been undergoing a renaissance
and currently some of the most creative and innovative campaigns fall into the category.
Direct response advertising is now seen as a highly valued
component of brand communication – appealing to the
audience beyond rational reasoning whilst at the same time
inciting an immediate behavior.
The attractiveness of direct response lies in its immediacy as well as high measurability of
results. In fact, the development of these campaigns often starts with measurement, or
the definition of the very specific intended audience response and ways of quantifying it.
This objective underlies all of the strategic and creative development. In this sense digital
channels and the data they can provide are a perfect match for DR initiatives. And that is
why technology and digital media are revolutionising this type of communication.
Alice Aldridge, Strategy Director at AMV BBDO, has established four creative
development principles for direct response advertising, which are applicable when
creating assets in all channels targeting various audiences:
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Direct response in the digital era
1. MOTIVATION: WHY YOU SHOULD ACT
Perhaps obvious but, effective direct response ads need to communicate why the
consumer should do what it is they’re being asked to; the audience needs to be able to
gain a clear understanding of how they will benefit from responding, so that they are
motivated to do so.
2. URGENCY: WHY YOU SHOULD ACT NOW
The immediacy of direct response advertising requires creating a sense of urgency within
the execution – communicating to consumers that their action is time-sensitive and the
time frame for the response is limited.
3. CALL TO ACTION: HOW YOU SHOULD ACT
A third direct fundamental response is to communicate how to act, so that if the
consumer chooses to engage with the campaign they know what is being asked of them
and how/where/when to act. One way to do so is to make the means of purchase a key
part of the communications.
4. MENTAL AVAILABILITY: WHY YOU WANTED TO ACT IN THE
FIRST PLACE
The fourth principle behind successful direct response campaigns is to return to why it
was in the consumer’s interest to act/purchase in the first place. This reinforces the
incentive and reminds the consumer that the action being asked of them is in their best
interest. This aspect of the campaign will often draw on the wider brand attributes to
reinforce motivation on a deeper, more emotional level.
SNICKERS, RUSSIA
BBDO Russia created a campaign for the Mars’ Snickers brand, called Shazam Your
Hunger (2018), which encouraged consumers to purchase limited edition Snickers bars in-
store, each of which had one of five ‘moods’ written on the chocolate bar wrapper.
Customers then ‘Shazamed’ the chocolate bar (i.e. scanned the label using the Shazam
app), to bring up a different version of the music video for the same new song by a
famous Russian rap band: normal, wild, weird, slow, and gloomy.
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Direct response in the digital era
The act of purchasing the chocolate bar in-store was fundamental to the campaign, and
effectively allowed customers to ‘unlock’ the content they wanted. The Hungry album - as
it was known - became part of the band’s tour, was released on iTunes and Playstore, and
was covered and parodied across the internet. Meanwhile, Snickers’ digital platform which
allowed the five films to be watched and mixed was hugely popular, and the music video
which started the whole thing had 26.5 million views on YouTube.
NIKE, A/R JORDAN
Nike’s A/R Jordan campaign (2018), has been billed as the world’s first shoppable
augmented reality experience.1
The campaign was created by Nike’s brand Jordan in
celebration of 30 years since Michael Jordan’s 1988 Slam Dunk, in the hope of connecting
with basketball fans who were not alive to witness the event when it happened. Michael
Jordan was imposed onto a geofenced court in downtown LA using augmented reality,
which allowed fans to witness his free throw line dunk as though they were watching the
original event. Viewers could buy the latest drop of the same sneakers Jordan wore in ’88,
which were delivered to their home address within two hours. This was made possible
thanks to a three-way collaboration between Snapchat as the exclusive social network,
Shopify as the check-out partner, and Darkstore as the fulfilment and delivery platform.
The A/R lens quadrupled previous engagement levels on Snapchat —raising the bar for
shoppable video. Most significantly, the limited-edition sneakers, made even more
exclusive by their availability only via the lens, sold out in just 23 minutes.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BRANDS
Digital direct response advertising is becoming increasingly sophisticated, especially with
the rise of social commerce and digitally native demographics. Whilst its nature is
complementary to brand communication, consistency between the two is crucial – direct
response has to both draw on brand assets to strengthen the appeal and reinforce these
assets in the audience’s minds to contribute to the overall brand image. At the same time,
the immediacy and action-focused nature of the communication allows for more
disruptive and provocative creative executions as well as more targeted iterations of the
overall brand appealing to specific audience segments. As channels become more
shoppable and the media landscape offers more audience engagement opportunities, we
will likely see the prominence and importance of direct response communications grow.
1
‘2018: A/R Jordan’. RGA. Accessed 1
st
April. Link
