2006

Take a step back and think about what it really takes to educate a consumer on the value of your product using long-form or short-form DRTV. Understand that while the longer format will afford you plenty of time to get your point across, the shorter 60- and 120-minute spots also serve as the perfect backdrop for an educational campaign.

The pull of DRTV is too much for brands to resist. Traditional TV spots have morphed into simple blurs of imagery, while long-form shows provide a platform from which to educate and inform customers about specific products and services.

DR on satellite radio is a viable option still on its way to maturity. The limiting factor is pretty obvious: there just aren't enough listeners on board yet.

How to maximize a campaign's success from the creative level up.

Timing is everything, and marketers who spend too much time overdoing it on the legwork often wind up missing the boat and going broke in the process. That doesn't mean you can't conduct some meaningful research before you put your DRTV commercial on the air, but it does mean that you should maximize your time by doing only the kind of research that will actually translate into valuable information that can be used to tweak a campaign into success.

So you're looking to tap into the podcasting craze that's sweeping the nation and the world, but you aren't sure how? Start by checking out the handful of companies that are already providing advertising services on top of the popular broadcast medium. Firms like Fruitcast, Blast Podcast and Podango sell advertising services that allow marketers to get their piece of the hype surrounding podcasts.

In advertising, accountability is everything. Well, not really, but it should be. Unfortunately, few mediums allow for it. Then there's direct response, a strategy that companies so often turn to when they've grown tired of using other, "unaccountable" media channels. After years of running 30-second, fiction-based representations of a brand image, many advertising departments wake up one morning and say to themselves: What if we actually generated sales from our advertising efforts?

No one likes to change. After all, mixing things up takes brainpower, effort and usually money – all of which we'd rather conserve than shell out on a new marketing program. But if the method is too enticing and profitable to resist, we'll do it anyway, right?

William Goldman said it succinctly: "Nobody knows anything." Goldman, acclaimed Hollywood scriptwriter of hits like "Butch Cassidy" and "All the President's Men," was referring, of course, to the near impossible task of producing blockbuster movies. But right now, on Madison Ave. and in corporate board rooms across the world, "nobody knows anything" about where video advertising will be in 10 years. No. Make that next year.

With 20 years of being a successful television and radio personality under her belt, Connie Willis thought she knew everything she needed to know about broadcasting.   That was, until she enrolled in a course for DRTV talent being given by DRTV advertising guru, Bob Circosta.