Direct Response Marketing

Guest Opinion: 'Boom-Shaka-Laka-Boom!' ... or Not?

1 Mar, 2008 By: Wendi Cooper Response

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Imagine this: I'm sitting in a product meeting with my fulfillment company's account representative, and on the table is the latest super exciting product. We have worked on many products over the course of 10 years, so we're pretty much finishing each other's sentences. But this time, something is very different.

Wendi Cooper

The product is a simple collection of DVDs. Four DVDs with two bonuses make up the main offer, and 6 DVDs are the upsell that completes the collection. Easy enough, right? Well, not really.

Oddly enough something is not clicking. For cryin' out loud, it's not brain surgery — it's a DVD collection. As I go over the product, I explain how the client doesn't want to print "Vol. 1" through "Vol. 10" on the covers for internal reasons and how I didn't really see a problem because each DVD could be identified by the picture on its cover. "This one is Freddie the Freeloader, this one Clem Kaddidlehopper, this one is George Appleby, and so on," I explain.

However, my rep, Alison, replies, "That's great ... but so what. I still don't know which is which."

"I just told you!" I said.

"No you didn't — you told me their names, not what identifies them!" she said

"No, I told you what identifies them — the pictures of Red," I replied.

Then it dawns on me: Alison has no idea who Red Skelton is. She has no idea that his hysterical characters were his claim to fame — and featured on the DVD covers — that entertained America every Thursday night from 1951 to 1971. Anyone who was born after 1925 grew up with and loved Red Skelton, right? I just took it for granted that Alison, born in 1972, knew Red Skelton. Boy, was I wrong!

Now imagine receiving a media proposal that targeted an 18-34-year-old male demographic. Yes, that's right — for Red Skelton. I don't mean this in a negative way, but most of the people on the team that created the schedule more than likely were born in the 1980s!

Well, it goes without saying that I found this challenge everywhere I turned. Inbound, Web site, customer service, editors — you name it. I found it in the least likely places. Last week I was talking to a company president in our business and he didn't know Red Skelton! I'm not sure why, but I took it for granted that a company president from the Midwest — as Red was — knew exactly who he was.

Here's my question — with more than 76 million Baby Boomers and 54 million Generation Ike folks living in the United States, coupled with our industry's desire to tap into that disposable income, how do we overcome this broad and growing generational gap between our target market/buyer and the support staff that ultimately holds the key to the bottom line?

This problem isn't going away — the gap will only widen. It reminds me of years ago when I was repping products into live shopping channels and found it amusing how the buyers were so young compared to their core demographic. Even then, I asked the question: how could they possibly understand what their customer really wants, or needs?

I understand the dynamics of a surge of new blood into our work force. Of course, and I hope that after much explanation, training, and visual aid, I was able to get the support services team to understand who Red Skelton was and what he meant to so many people. But will that resonate back to the consumer since it's a learned passion and not an emotional one? Only time will tell.

When you set out to target the largest and strongest market in our country's history, keep this thought in mind — can one truly place media, convert a sale, design collateral material and build customer loyalty if you've never heard the words of that Boomer anthem: "Boom-Shaka-Laka-Boom"?

Wendi Cooper is the owner of C Spot Run Productions LLC, a full-service direct response production and campaign management company. She can be contacted at (310) 322-2449 or via E-mail at info@cspotrun.com.

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