The direct people. The brand folks. The sales force.
Richard Rosen, in his 2009 book “Convergence Marketing: Combining Brand and Direct for Unprecedented Profits,” speaks to all three audience segments about how best to sell to customers across all media—which includes combining the best of what each camp brings to the table. He presents unique tools, such as his Rosen Velocity Scale, that attempt to create more profit while strengthening brand loyalty.
Just as importantly, Rosen does his best to get each camp to understand convergence marketing from its own professional needs perspectives. He is founder, president and CEO of ROSEN, a global consultancy firm based in Portland, Ore., that specializes in transforming marketing and advertising campaigns into cost-effective business models. His firm has received 28 ECHO Awards, and Rosen has received the Caples Organization’s Andi Emerson Award and the first B-to-B Marketer of the Year Award by the Direct Marketing Association.
Boldt: How does convergence marketing work for a company?
Rosen: It’s got everything to do with mail and all media. Convergence is about taking the very best of the brand builders [within a company] and understanding what the brand truly stands for, and then disseminating throughout the entire organization, down into the creative team, the creative idea of what the brand stands for—which goes far beyond what an art director believed the graphic interpretation of the brand was. Then take the best stuff from the direct marketing folks with their holistic science of changing people’s behavior to move forward in a sales process. Next, take the best of sales with the pipeline (including understanding what A, B, C and D leads are as they come onto the file) and the copy, which can be written to overcome the objection set and goes far beyond simply features and benefits.
Boldt: For which companies do general advertising tactics fail?
Rosen: Let’s go back to the model of traditional advertising that said: “If I build it, you will come.” Purpose and pure awareness will lead to 80 percent preference, then consideration and lastly sales. The model worked for Virgin Atlantic, Nike, Microsoft, Apple, GE. They’d spend an obscene amount of money to make the model work, and then products just had to be parity or better. Nike doesn’t make the best sneakers, but it dominates. But who didn’t it work for? Ninety some odd percentage. They didn’t have enough money.
