I recently read and got a few good laughs about the drama with Video Professor from a few months back.  The basic gist is that Video Professor is suing more than 100 anonymous Internet posters over derogatory comments that they made about Video Professor’s business.  That’s right, suing anonymous internet posters on the site infomercialscams.com.   From arstechnica:

The company’s federal complaint is a strange read, since it does not identify even a single false and defamatory statement; it simply asserts the existence of such statements somewhere on The Interwebs. Despite that, the company was able to obtain a subpoena to obtain the information it is seeking.

Unfortunately it is instances like these that can certainly propagate the image of infomercials (and the products behind them) as non-legitimate business.  It certainly signals a problem when a company gets a lot of negative feedback on the web (and 615 complaints with the BBB, albeit most of them resolved) and can often hurt other marketers using the same medium.

So what ARE marketers to do about anonymous web feedback?  For starters you can play defense - respond to every complaint, constantly monitor via search engines what boards are messaging about your product, and actively seek to make the wrongs right.  For long term success though you have to play offense - that means having a great product, building a great brand that meets a consumer need, and empowering your employees to build lifetime customers.  It’s easier said then done but probably better than finding yourself in the position of the founder of Video Professor:

“I personally do not believe that you can be anonymous and bash people and get away with it under the First Amendment. I will stay with this case, and I will get the names that I am requesting. I will pursue this until the Supreme Court tells me I can’t get them.”

Personally I think heading all the way to the Supreme Court to “get them” is not quite the ideal customer relationship dynamic I’d be hoping for.

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There’s a decent amount of discussion around what Seth Godin and others have termed interruption media.  For those new to the term:

Interruption media advertising is advertising based on the idea that a consumer is given entertainment, information, etc. and that is then interrupted to serve an ad to the audience, whether it’s a print ad in the middle of your Cat Fancy magazine article, a banner ad along the top of a CNN.com story or a TV spot during Grey’s Anatomy.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of direct response TV advertising. Part of the beauty behind the half hour TV infomercial is that it is NOT interruption advertising in my opinion.  Yes you could argue that the “interruption” occurs as you’re flipping from one thing you’re watching to another but by and large if you watch a half hour infomercial you are very clearly choosing to do so.  So why do people choose to watch these often ridiculous selling pitches?  Entertainment and Education.  Who doesn’t get a kick out of the shows like the Magic Bullet or watching Billy Mays hawking another cleaning product or appliance?

So can long-form infomercials continue to be viable as viewers move more and more to on-demand entertainment?  It certainly poses an interesting question and certainly raises the bar for the marketer to both entertain and educate.  Heck, I’d love to see Comcast offer me on-demand infomercials and tell me which ones are highest ranked by viewers.  What if they could not only rate the show but also the product (if they’ve rec’d it).  The good shows would certainly rise to the top and the people with the biggest budgets but crappy products may not always be the winners.  Could be quite interesting.

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So here we are.  Post #1 on the KPI Blog.  I’m sure there are many questions bubbling up in your head right now (there are in mine) so let’s just start at the beginning:

Who is KPI Direct? 

We’re a small firm that works with direct-to-consumer marketers.  Kind of a fancy way of saying we work with (some of) the companies who have the 3am TV infomercial where you can “get a free bottle of our fountain of youth supplement just for calling!”  We run campaigns on TV, Radio, Web, Mail and Print.  Generally we stay in the health and beauty category although we’ve chosen to steer clear of certain products within the space (we don’t do the sketchy e-mails that promise to make certain appendages bigger or longer…just not our bag).

Why the heck do you have a blog? 

Good question and I can’t say we have the perfect answer (yet).  What I do know is that there are massive changes in HOW marketing is done as technology continues to evolve.  Part of this shift is the move from outbound (the marketer finds you via TV, Radio, Print, Mail) to more inbound (you find the marketer via web search, blogs, word of mouth, etc.).  Yes, at this point you might be baffled that we (KPI) as true outbound marketers are starting a blog (the epitome of inbound/opt-in marketing).  Well, I guess that’s the whole point - we believe outbound marketing is going to change dramatically with the advent of efficient inbound marketing tools.  We believe a lot of traditional outbound marketers are going to be SOL if they don’t embrace the change.  And we’d like to be at the center of the discussion as the whole thing continues to develop.  We also believe that success in marketing is driven more and more by deep analytics and disciplined execution.  Marketing is becoming much less art and much more science.  If you don’t believe me then look at just a few of the companies succeeding today.

What can I expect from reading the blog? 

Well, hopefully we’ll provide some worthwhile food for thought, some practical case studies of marketing in action.  We plan to share interesting things in our space as well as the general marketing space and hopefully not take ourselves too seriously along the way. Also, please do join in on the discussion (note the little link below that says “comment”- we put it there just for you).

So there it is.  Post #1.  Hopefully many more (and better ones) to come.

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