Top Three Topics From the Miami ERA Great Ideas Summit 2015

Miami ERA 2015 - Loews Hotel, Miami Beach

It’s fascinating to see and hear how the key topics affecting the direct response industry change from year to year, and even from event to event. This year’s Great Ideas Summit 2015, aka the Miami ERA Show, proved once again how dynamic the direct to consumer marketing environment really is.

While last year everyone seemed to be talking web marketing and maximizing revenue, this year’s trench meetings centered on expanded media and product distribution. More specifically:

• The five minute spot unit length
• Home shopping integration
  
• International distribution

Although still not widely used, savvy marketers are reaping the benefits of the five-minute short form (or long form as some view it) unit.  A few years ago five-minute unit inventory was almost non-existent, however that is changing as more networks begin to expand this unit selection. In particular, networks  featuring movies or extended content appear to be perfectly suited for the five-minute unit. For higher priced products or complex sales that rely on an inbound phone component to convert customers, the five-minute is rapidly becoming a solid addition to any media plan.

As part of your campaign planning stage, and in particular the production phase, we recommend you manage your creative assets in preparation for creating and integrating the five-minute unit length into the campaign.

Now, while live shop or home shopping is nothing new, it does appear there is a renewed energy among marketers and clients to embrace this channel. Putting aside scalability issues for this outlet, just about any revenues from shopping network appearances clearly are a major factor internally with companies as they build out their direct to consumer campaigns. When doing the obligatory end of the day analysis, we are hearing from many clients and manufacturers that home shopping contribution to the bottom line is important to them. We’ve been careful over the years to stop shy of saying DRTV and home shopping work together from a marketing perspective; but, from the accountant’s viewpoint, they do.

 The conversations around international distribution this year at the Great Ideas Summit were perhaps the most interesting of all. It may just be that the “conquer the US first” mantra may not always be best approach. Perhaps this year more than ever we’ve entertained questions of a simultaneous distribution approach with the US, Europe and Asia. It appears there is a clear mindset shift to multi-prong distribution attacks, regardless of the country. This could be the culmination of global commerce shrinking down upon itself, where it’s just as easy to sell in the UK or Japan as it is the US. Perhaps not on the same scale, but again, revenue is revenue, no matter where it comes from. 

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