It must be nice to be a brand marketer. Brand marketers have all the fun of creating advertising without assuming any of the responsibility for generating results.
Consider a branding effort by Doritos which is expected to launch June 12. That's an actual launch date, not a campaign debut date.
On that day, Frito-Lay will beam a 30-second Doritos commercial from a 500-megahertz ultrahigh-frequency radar into outer space. The target audience is whoever or whatever lives in a solar system within the Ursa Major constellation.
Only a brand-focused advertiser would go into a new market with as little information as Frito-Lay apparently has. Any intergalactic direct marketer would refuse to roll out such a campaign without at least a 10,000-planet test panel (or more, if the marketer wanted to evaluate variations in creative copy and offer).
So what does brand marketer Frito-Lay know about its audience? Well, Ursa Major is 42 light-years from Earth. The constellation was chosen because 47 Ursae Majoris, a star within the constellation, has similar characteristics to our sun, and is orbited by planets that could have life forms similar to us. Note that by “us” I include bacteria, mollusks, dinosaurs, tigers and brand marketers. Only one of those, as far as we know, has both an appetite for, and the means to purchase, Doritos.
The commercial will be transmitted from the Eiscat Space Centre in Svalbard, an archipelago located midway between Norway and the North Pole. Svalbard's market for Doritos, incidentally, is only slightly more viable than the planets surrounding 47 Ursae Majoris.
One might think that the Eiscat Space Centre was named for Olav Eiscat, the Norwegian astrologer who identified 88 constellations, each based on a variation of pickled herring. One would be wrong, for two reasons.
First, Olav Eiscat is a figment of my imagination. Second, “Eiscat” stands for “European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association.” (Yes, it does. Look it up.) Incoherent scatter marketing? Somehow I can't see the DM gurus racing to embrace this term.
Regardless of the tactic, interstellar brand marketers have an obvious advantage over interstellar DMers. With brand marketing, the communication is purely one way. A message sent at near-light speed to 47 Ursae Majoris might result in a sale within this (Earth) century, assuming convenience stores near the star have Doritos in stock.
A direct marketing message would require much more lead time than a branding campaign. Even if the message travels at nearly the speed of light it won't hit its target until 2050. Figure another 42 years for the reply, and a third 42-year period to fulfill the order, assuming every entity involved moves at the speed of light. Anyone in supply chain management want to step up and comment on that likelihood?
And that's without factoring in the time it takes to validate credit card payments. With intergalactic orders, anything that adds to waiting time has to be carefully pondered, especially given the emphasis DMers put on quarter-over-quarter campaign results.
Consider a postcard campaign from a flower marketer sent to the same audience near Ursa Major, and assume a mail carrier operates at near the speed of light. With a minimum 126-year delay between initial solicitation and order fulfillment, the only relevant offers would be “Order now to ensure timely delivery of ‘Congratulations on the retirement of your unborn grandson’?” floral arrangements.
Another concern with the currently scheduled Doritos commercial is its form. A one-time 30-second message is no way to generate an order, even with a catchy toll-free number or a memorable URL — neither of which, to my knowledge, this ad has. No, a true intergalactic direct response spot really would need to be a 30-minute infomercial, with the response mechanism repeated at least seven or eight times.
There's also the deliverability issue. In late March, the U.S. Postal Service announced a crackdown on mail delivery to vacant addresses. The USPS is not going to take kindly to DM solicitations sent to 47 Ursae Majoris that don't have a validated recipient waiting for them.
Never mind the billions of potential life forms mathematical models anticipate are waiting for our messages: For a true direct mail campaign, the postal service is going to expect a prequalified address, although it has graciously agreed to offer discount rates for ZIP+4 barcoded mail.
There are other reasons why direct marketers would run from the Doritos proposition. What, exactly, does Frito-Lay know about this audience? Denizens of planets near 47 Ursae Majoris could all have very high blood pressure, and an ad offering sodium-rich products such as Doritos might be considered an act of overt hostility. What DMer wants his or her brand tarred with the brush of starting an intergalactic war?
At a minimum, if their life forms are anything like ours, the first interstellar message received back on Earth from 47 Ursae Majoris, 84 years from now, might be from Ursae Majoris-based parents complaining that their children are overweight and lethargic, and that we should be urging them to eat more fruit.
The originators of a one-way branding commercial like this do not have to consider such things. It must be nice to be a brand marketer.
W
For more of Richard H. Levey's Loose Cannon columns, visit http://directmag.com/opinions-columnists/loosecannon/index.html.
