When I signed up for a “Marketing 101” course during my sophomore year in college (at Rutgers University…open loop), I had no idea that the course would be my entry drug into direct response marketing…for the wrong reason.
That is, the course was a snooze…and had nothing to do with being “direct.”
It was all about “generalities” of marketing (and advertising) with a Madison Avenue bent.
The textbook focused on things like:
- “Display advertising” and impulse/point of sale buying…and I don’t mean online…only retail. (After all, I took the course in the Jurassic Period of marketing, before the Internet took over, circa 1977)
- “Public Relations” …which I have since learned is not for marketers who are looking for ROI (understatement)
- “Brand Advertising” …which I’ve talked about in previous posts…in terms of giving me hives…but with a prescription for avoiding that affliction as well.
- “Publicity” …a kissing cousin of Public Relations…and not in the context of how the all-time direct response marketing great Paul Hartunian created the ultimate publicity course, one that you can actually make money by implementing. But alas, “Publicity” in a college textbook in the late 70’s was simply fluff.
However, there was one line in that textbook…it might have been a paragraph…that got me interested in this “marketing thing” (although that interest took a while to ferment…also an open loop). 🙂
Buried in all that muck disguised as a marketing textbook, there was a casual mention of something called “Direct Marketing,” and it was associated with words like “measurable” and “accountable” …words that seemed to ignite something in me.
Which has nothing to do with “guessing what works” (which the rest of the book seemed to endorse).
Entry drug indeed.
While I was mildly aroused at the time (take your head out of the gutter), my “direct marketing gene” lay dormant until it became an addiction four years later (after arriving at Boardroom Inc).
Boardroom was a dynamic, entrepreneurial company with a direct marketing university embedded inside of it…a factory without being a sweatshop…a practical learning organization that only focused on measurable results…working with the best-of-the-best practitioners…and a place I could partake in accountable advertising and marketing for the next 34 years.
Throughout my first decade at Boardroom, I experienced a sea change around me…not only in my niche of the direct response newsletter and book business which was one of the hottest categories of the day…but throughout the marketing landscape.
One of the key indicators of this sea change was the explosion of “direct response marketing divisions” popping up in every major general advertising agency…and I chronicled this phenomenon in a post about one of the pioneers of that revolution, Lester Wunderman. David Ogilvy was also one of those pioneers.
If you were around back then you may recall Wunderman Direct and Ogilvy and Mather Direct being two of the hottest shops around.
Read “Being Direct” and “Anything but Mad” for more background about this revolution.
Then at the end of my first decade at Boardroom (1989), 12 years after being a prisoner in that Marketing 101 class, it came full circle.
I was approached by the chairman of the business school at Rutgers, who I knew…and he knew what I had been up to since graduating (i.e. preaching the gospel of “being direct”) … with an offer I couldn’t refuse:
“Brian…I’ve got this course on the books titled ‘Direct Marketing’ and it had been taught by an academic who never practiced the craft…he got terrible evaluations…and the only way I will offer the course again is if it is taught by someone who has actually used this form of marketing and done it successfully in the real world. And I would like that someone to be you.”
This reinforced for me that direct marketing was not an academic pursuit but rather a “utility” …one that needs to be taught through practical application and not through a textbook talking about how not to measure the effectiveness of advertising.
I was the man for the job.
And it was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done…and I taught the course with an eye towards creating skilled practitioners.
Which I did.
But getting direct marketing into college curriculums was at an infant stage in 1989…and I turned it into a mission (along with many other direct marketing colleagues at the time) to change that trend.
To that end, I served on the Board of The Direct Marketing Educational Foundation for over 20 years…and was a Trustee inside various non-profits, supporting the launch of direct marketing courses throughout the country and awarding scholarships to students who were as turned on to direct marketing as I was.
Today “DM” is taught in some form in hundreds of colleges…hopefully with a practical bent and not an academic bent…but at least it is now mainstream.
I’ve met many students over the past 30 years who now have a degree in direct marketing…I’ve even hired some of them…and I’m pleased to report that their college education paid off.
Now that’s what I call measurable…and accountable. 🙂
Warmly,
Brian
P.S. I was reminded of my initiation into becoming a “professor” of direct marketing in 1989 when earlier this year, I was contacted by a real life academic in the wild, looking for practical applications to marketing.
He obviously deserved my attention.
Gary David, a Professor of Sociology at Bentley College, invited me to be a guest on his podcast, “Experience by Design.”
Before consenting to the interview (despite me being an easy mark…I never turn down an opportunity to talk about my addiction to direct response marketing), I wanted to see a definition of “Experience Design” …and here’s what hooked me to do the interview even more:
Experience design is a user-centered process of creating and shaping the entire perception a person has of a product, service, or environment to foster positive emotional response and achieve specific goals.
If the “positive emotional response” and “specific goals” lead to a measurable result…and one that the user can make money at (or at least profit in other ways) … it sounded practical enough to me…even with the invite coming from an academic.
My plan was then to make sure my definition of “experience by design” came through in the interview–focused on measurability.
And Gary did not disappoint…he is not your run-of-the-mill academic.
He was curious, engaging…and most importantly, results oriented.
Clearly a “recovering marketing professor” of the highest order.
Give a listen here and let me know what you think.
Gary even has a paid sponsor (which he opens with) …making sure he gets results with every podcast (i.e. he gets paid).
Along with some excellent intro music.
Experience Design at its finest. 🙂
I only wish someone like Gary was teaching that marketing course in 1977 so I would have avoided all the hives.
https://www.experiencexdesign.com/episodes/making-meaningful-marketing-with-brian-kurtz
P.P.S. To expand on today’s theme–which began with a non-useful “textbook”–I want to tell you about the MOST useful textbook (also considered a masterpiece) that is also the most practical…one that requires a “class” (of sorts)…which turns it into a utility.
Of course the masterpiece is Gene Schwartz’s timeless classic, Breakthrough Advertising.
And the “class” is The Breakthrough Advertising Bootcamp.
The next one (our 9th!) begins on October 20th…click here to make sure you get access to one of the precious seats once they become available by getting on the waiting list.
On that page you will read about why you need to be there…but only if you want to apply Gene’s fundamental marketing, copywriting, and behavioral principles to everything you do.
And it beats breaking out in hives. 🙂
Over the two weeks, you will experience epiphanies that will lead to action…and profit…that will last a lifetime.
That’s not hyperbole.
And you will have an opportunity to buy a copy of Breakthrough Advertising at a discount with your registration to the Bootcamp.
Hope to see you on October 20th.
https://breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/ba-bootcamp/