From time-to-time I will receive an email in my inbox or a piece of DM through my door and actually think, ‘this looks interesting’ and I may even open it. Hurdle number one overcome you may think, ‘he’s actually engaged with it!’ Alas, my interest only really lies in that of a professional manner, seeing what the competitors are doing in comparison to my own clients. Very rarely will I actually engage with a piece of DM or direct response piece with there being almost no chance of me ever responding to it.
I could perhaps put this down to it being an every day part of my working life and a general ‘I know what you’re after’ attitude, but I’m afraid it isn’t that at all. Even before I worked in the industry, I was very unresponsive to DM and alike. I’m afraid I am very much part of what some call the “Google generation”. It’s all about ‘pull’ and not about ‘push’. If I want to know something, want to buy something, need to insure something or even want to donate to something, my first port of call is always Google. This is very much the same attitude of many people of my generation, babies of the 80’s and 90’s.
In a few decades, much of this country’s wealth will belong to this generation – it will be the “Google Generation” that marketers target for response. So, how do we get the unresponsive to respond?
There’s probably not one simple answer, but the best place to start is of course with online. We’re already using Google as a means of directly targeting through SEO and key word terms – but even this may not be enough. It is very much content that this generation require, and we will separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff to get what we want, when we want it. In a way, I am suggesting that we have to be much more creative in our means of targeting such consumers, instead of being the advertiser interrupting this audience; we should be the advertiser providing that much sought after content. We as advertisers need to be more exploratory in how we encourage consumer engagement.
Whether it is through search engines, social networking, apps or something that hasn’t even been thought of yet, the truth of the matter is, that expanding media consumption and the evolution of consumer habits will continue. As a result, direct response has to evolve with it. One place where this is already beginning to happen in a sense is in one online arena that is growing and growing. Online gaming, it is fast becoming a much more accessible means of entertainment for not only teenage boys and young men, but the whole family. Let’s take Microsoft xBox for example. Through their Live platform they are able to feed content directly to their users who in turn can explore this network for the content that they want and when they want, you can even access it through your smart phone. Brands such as Sky, Zune and Last.fm have already seen the massive potential in this captive and evolving audience. It’s not just about gaming these days, xBox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network offer a multitude of content ranging from movies, social networking, music and of course a market place! As this means of consumption grows and becomes more accessible, so does the potential for marketers; commercial, fundraising and brand building alike.
Perhaps the future of direct response lies in the hands of the consumer telling the advertiser what they want and with us advertisers delivering that content/need directly to those consumers in return… we have to shift from push to pull.
