The “convergence marketing” session at DMA 2011 by Richard Rosen reminded me of a tweet I read yesterday that said “it looks like direct marketers are more concerned about brand than general agencies are.”
Rosen is talking about taking the best of brand and direct and converging these two disciplines.
The Rosen Velocity Scale that shows the convergence is a "process tool to drive and measure the speed in which the communication stimulates an interaction between the individual and the brand via all media."
So, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 on extreme brand side and 10 as extreme direct, you can build brand anywhere from 1-10. The higher the number, the more “velocity.” Rosen’s example is the Chrysler new launch of the 300 that’s just pure visual, no copy. He ranks it a 1. With a little more copy it could be a 3.
That’s a metric for you. Am I being too snarky? It’s not “measuring the speed in which the communication stimulates an interaction.” It’s a subjective label.
Rosen showed the Chrysler 200 Super Bowl ad evoking empathy and called it amazing, but it cost $9 million. “Can we, as evolved brand and evolved direct marketers, find a way to do something better?” Demonstrating the next step in the sales process, he flashed a website with pages showing cars and prices. This is "classic stuff to sell a car" – but not in a good way.
The job of the commercial is to take me from point A to point B in the sales process. (Or point 1 to 2 on the velocity scale.) Then the next job is to get me from point 2 to point 3. It’s all very linear. Very much like the sales funnel we’ve all seen.
And that leaves me wondering . . . if you always have to start at 1 and move through this continuum, how do you know where your customer is? And do you stop when you start getting results? (Side note: Later in the presentation, he seemed to advocate starting at 3 and running campaigns through 7 because performance decreases at levels 9-10.)
Rosen’s examples provided what he calls an "extended brand aura" – the extra things brands do to get positive attention. Triscuits distributed postcards with seeds embedded in them to help show that they aren’t necessarily the big, processed food you might have thought. Pedigree dog food created the Pedigree Foundation that donates dog food when you click on a link in their website.
It seems to me that this demonstrates branding . . . but where was the sales success? What’s the convergence here?
I still don't understand how you can do more with less in Rosen’s process. I guess I’ll find the “velocity” side of his scale elsewhere at the DMA.
If you saw this session and disagree with my opinion, I hope you’ll let me know in the comments.