Home  Article Archive

How to Blend Brand Marketing with Direct Response Marketing

By David Frey

There is an ongoing debate in the marketing world between corporate "image" advertising agencies that espouse the virtues of "branding" and direct response marketers who embrace the principle of accountable advertising.

What's the Difference Between Brand Ads and Direct Response Ads?:

Here are the basic difference between the two approaches:

Brand Advertising: Brand advertisers create ads and jingles that stick in our heads so that whenever we think of a specific product or when we're ready to buy a product, we'll remember a specific brand as a result of a series of ads that was embedded in our brain.

Direct Response Advertising: All direct response advertisers care about is immediate sales. So they create ads that drive people to immediate action and they place mechanisms in the ad that allow results to be measured.

Often brand ads have large photos and witty phrases that are designed to capture our attention and make use remember the brand. Direct response ads usually start off with strong headlines and have more copy than images and end up with a call to take some type of action that can be tracked.

Why All the Fuss?

Since the dawn of marketing, brand and direct response marketers have had an ongoing feud.

Why all the fuss?

Both types of advertising have their place. Both work in certain applications.

Usually, it takes more money to make brand advertising work because the human brain requires a lot of repetition to remember something or to make a brand "stick" in our minds.

But it does work.

For instance, if I need a piece of furniture the first place I'm going to go to is Gallery Furniture here in Houston.

Jim Macinvale (aka "Mattres Mac"), the owner of Gallery Furniture is constantly on the radio and television airwaves reminding me that he has the "lowest prices" in town.

He actually doesn't, but he gets everyone to believe it.

It works. How do I know?

Because Gallery Furniture is the single most successful furniture retail store in the nation!

He's got to be doing something right.

But What If You Could Combine Both Brand and Direct Response Advertising...

If both approaches to marketing work, then what would happen if you combined them? It would probably work even better...don't you think?

Last Saturday I was running down at the YMCA and was flipping through a magazine called, "Every Baby."

Why was I reading that magazine? Who knows.

Anyway, while I was reading the magazine I came across two ads that really caught my attention immediately. Neither had anything to do with what I was interested in, but they did capture my attention.

Both ads cleverly used an application of direct response "education-based advertising" and they also had a "branding" element in them that helped me to remember the company.

The first ad was for sleeping products for babies.

Here the actual ad...

http://www.davidfrey.us/recommends/slumber

Notice how this ad used the "7 Steps" phrase and educated the consumer about how to select a crib mattress. (Stephen Covey's book, "7 Habits of Highly Successful People has made the number "7" a magical number.)

The second ad was for a cord blood bank. (I didn't even know there was such a thing.)

Here's the actual ad...

http://www.davidfrey.us/recommends/cord

Notice how this ad uses the "Dear Abbey" educational style of ad to capture people's attention, establish credibility, and educated prospects on cord blood banking. It was pretty compelling, I must admit.

Both advertisements used 1/3 of the page for direct response style advertising and the 2/3 for branding. There was just enough text to pique my interest and make me look at the brand style ad to find out more about the advertiser.

The ads certainly accomplished their task with me...and I'm sure they have with many other readers.

Conclusion

I'm sure there is a name for this type of advertising, but I call it, "Advertorial Branding Ads."

They are a combination of traditional brand advertising and have elements of direct response advertising.

Interestingly enough, they are both full page ads. The advertorial ads are placed vertically.

I've read somewhere that if you're going to do a 1/3 page ad, that readership is higher with a tall vertical ad, rather than a wide horizontal ad (I haven't tested it myself.).

Next time you're doing a full page ad and want to promote your brand as well, you might consider this approach to advertising.