Direct Response Marketing

DuPont's Teflon Slides Into DRTV

1 Sep, 2006 By: Thomas Haire Response

---

We have a brand — TeflonAE — that has 98-percent global brand awareness. That allows for very little growth on a vertical basis. It's maxed out," says Rich Thompson, senior marketing manager for the Teflon brand at Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont. "However, there was still an opportunity to grow horizontally — new products that mean more than just easy-to-clean and care for. In this realm, direct response television provides us with a significant way to touch all members of our value chain, both business-to-business and business-to-consumer."

Rich Thompson

Thompson, who carries more than 18 years of progressive marketing and new product development experience in consumer products (he's been involved with the Teflon brand since 2001), knows both his product and his DRTV. After holding a number of marketing positions at Newell Rubbermaid, Thompson became marketing manager of that company's Mirro/Wearever division in the late 1990s. There he had "indirect" experience with a successful long-form DRTV program for the company's Allegro brand before taking the reins on a long-form DR campaign for the AirBake line.

"The show was set to re-launch a successful brand that had stagnated," says Thompson, who operates out of his home office in DePere, Wis. "We had the spots tagged and were ready to go when I left the company to come to DuPont."

The campaign was cancelled after his departure, much to Thompson's chagrin. "I knew the power of DR, and AirBake was going to be a huge success," he contends.

DuPont Facts and Figures

However, joining DuPont just a year before its bicentennial celebration (see timeline) was a move Thompson couldn't turn down. After all, DuPont is one of the world's largest companies (ranking No. 66 in the most recent Fortune 500) and the consumer housewares applications of the Teflon brand fell right in with Thompson's experience.

Plus, DuPont made its money and its success as an innovative company — risking its reputation and its hard-earned profits to come up with new inventions that would benefit business and consumers alike. With such an innovative background, what major company could be better suited to taking a shot at a different kind of direct response campaign for what Thompson calls "an ingredient product"?

A DuPont DR campaign in association with Farberware saw some success during third-quarter 2005

 

Combining Innovation and Expertise

 

While DuPont's history dates to 1802, when E.I. du Pont founded an explosives company, the history of Teflon starts in a New Jersey laboratory in 1938. Dr. Roy Plunkett, a DuPont chemist, was working with gases related to the company's FreonAE product (Freon is familiar to many American consumers as it was used in air conditioning units and the like in the past) when he discovered that one sample had spontaneously polymerizedinto a substance called polytetraflouroethylene (PTFE). DuPont registered the product under the trademark Teflon in 1945.

1 2 3 4 5 

Bookmark it: digg del.icio.us technorati yahoo facebook twitter