What Advertisers Can Learn From Billy Mays

Famed Pitchman's Success for Direct-Response Marketers Still Eludes Brand Marketers

From Advertising Age, by Tim O'Leary (excerpt)

Mays' success reinforces many facts that direct-response marketers innately understand but brand marketers still find elusive, including:  

• Everyone watches DRTV. Kids, moms, lawyers, business execs, poor, middle class and the rich -- they all watch. DRTV is not a demographic profile; it is a marketing method and sales channel.
• Direct response is a valid approach to brand building. The essence of brand is not beautiful imagery or clever slogans; often it is more about consumer acceptance of a product's ability to solve a problem. In fact, after OxiClean's success, mega-brand marketers such as P&G and Clorox entered the DRTV world, often with products and creative designed to replicate what OxiClean had done.
• DRTV drives sales. For most products, the real miracle of direct response is its ability to drive retail sales, and it allows companies with limited advertising budgets to do battle with the big boys. OxiClean was a nice little company when it only sold direct to consumers. When it rolled into retail using the cost efficiencies of DRTV, it became a powerhouse that threatened the world's most sophisticated retail brands.
• People like to be sold. Brand advertising is frequently so obsessed with itself that it often forgets to sell us the product. Show us what you want us to buy, and tell us why we should buy it. Mays made us understand the value of his products.
• The only true test of DRTV is "live testing." Clients constantly ask about an alternative to a real media test, but unfortunately there is no replacement. People in a forced group environment act differently than they do in the privacy of their own homes. I can guarantee you that Billy Mays never would have made it out of a focus group, yet he became one of the most famous pitchmen in history.