My first column for DIRECT ran in the June 1991 issue; this will be my last. I have accepted a new position at a global ad agency that requires full-time involvement around the world. With 66 monthly deadlines behind me, my Mac mouse is going into journalistic retirement.
Can you remember as far back as 1991? Back then, only a few leading-edge companies actively harnessed the power of database-driven marketing to boost sales and profits. The practice of differentiating your advertising and promotion based on what is known about the behavior of each individual you want to reach was considered a nonstarter by most marketers.
Now that yesterday's heresy has become conventional wisdom, it's easy to forget how things were just a short while ago.
Do you remember when airlines concentrated their marketing budgets on brand-building TV commercials showing planes soaring into the friendly skies?
Today, airlines on every continent spend more dollars promoting the relationship with their best customers than they do advertising the core brand. Who would have thought that DMers would create a new form of "universal currency" called "frequent-flyer miles"? The new "money" is eagerly collected by tens of millions of North and South Americans, the French, South Africans, Malaysians, Australians and greedy travelers in just about every country of the world.
Do you remember when the concept of a "bank without walls" was an idea seasoned bankers loved to hate?
Today there are 500,000 customers cheerfully depositing their money at First Direct, a pioneering bank in the U.K. without walls, branches or bank tellers. And Citibank is closing branches each month as more customers switch to direct banking by phone and computer modem.
Do you remember when packaged goods marketers relied entirely on mass media to build brand image and gain market share without knowing who their end users were by name, address and buying behavior?
It's no longer that way.
Nowadays, the management at Pillsbury and Kraft in the U.S., Heinz in the U.K. and Nestle worldwide, accumulate and analyze data about millions of customers. With the eye-opening launch of Nestle's Casa Buitoni Club for Buitoni pasta in 1993 and the arrival of the Heinz at Home relationship marketing program in 1995, the strategy of having a direct relationship with the people who consume the product began to take hold for branded manufacturers.
Do you remember when selling cars was completely about a mind-numbing bombardment of look-alike TV commercials and a bone-chilling bargaining session with a sassy dealer?
That was before GM shocked the marketing world with $50 million worth of TV support for a direct mail campaign launching its co-branded credit card. Overnight, the world's largest automotive marketer became one of the world's smartest direct relationship marketers. And, when 40,000 loyal Saturn owners spent their summer vacation driving to Tennessee, every automaker in the world had to sit up and take notice.
In just half a decade we've witnessed the climax of the great marketing turnaround - from mass-market thinking to one-to-one thinking.
Is there more to come in our future? I believe so. My hunch is that an emerging trend - the spread of what Tom Collins and I call Voluntary Advertising - will reshape marketing communications as much as (or more than) anything we've seen to date.
Voluntary Advertising is advertising that consumers actually want and go out of their way to request. Toll-free phone lines, audio- and videocassettes, automated fax reply, computer disks, CD-ROM, e-mail and now the World Wide Web - all these make for easier voluntary interaction between an advertiser and its customers and best prospects.
Increasingly in the countdown to the 21st century, mass-media advertising will be devoted to luring high-potential prospects and getting them to write, call or visit the advertiser's Web site for more of what the consumer wants - information, a "live" demonstration, a free sample, relevant entertainment or enrollment in an ongoing program.
Many ads for mutual funds companies now routinely list both a phone number and a URL. One mutual funds company, Robertson Stephens, goes even further; a recent ad for its Partners Fund displays a chart of the fund's impressive performance and a picture of Andrew Pilar, portfolio manager, with an invitation to phone him.
If you call the toll-free number provided (and hack through the thicket of voice-mail signals), Mr. Pilar himself will get on the phone (by recording, of course) and explain his investment strategy. Investors interested in the fund, those who are most inclined to buy and volunteered to hear this recorded message, will listen carefully and eagerly.
In the U.K., Shell is running full-page ads consisting solely of an invitation to visit Shell's Web site. Eagle automotive advertising is running full-page cardstock inserts devoted entirely to the offer of a free video. Soon, Datavision will offer a patented, affordable process making it possible to customize videos to the demographics and interests of each individual.
And so it goes. The march of information and communications technology into new territory will continue, and ingenious direct marketers will continue to adapt technology to the cause of relationship-building.
What won't continue is my commentary in the Rapp Around the World column. In closing, I want to thank the readers of DIRECT for your comments and letters over the past five years, and the imagination, daring and perseverance that yielded the achievements I have had the privilege of writing about.
Stan Rapp is publisher of international newsletter MaxiMarketing Insights and is co-author with Thomas L. Collins of Success Secrets of the MaxiMarketing Winners.
COPYRIGHT 1996 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
