The Birth Of Drtv

The Birth Of Drtv
Article Entitled: The Birth Of Drtv
TV-101. THE BIRTH OF DRTV
A comparison of infomercials and DRTV Spots with all types of TV advertising from 30 years ago reveals what made direct response TV advertising feasible. Three services made available during the last decade made direct response television possible. They are:
TOLL FREE 800 NUMBERS - The consumer is now able to respond or interact directly with the advertiser. The numbers are widely available, convenient, and most importantly, free to the consumer.
PROLIFERATION OF CREDIT CARDS - Over 100 million credit cares are in circulation in the U.S. alone. This tool enables a huge number of consumers to make purchases over the telephone.
OVERNIGHT DELIVERY - To get consumers to respond to your sales offer right away, make sure you give them the satisfaction of having you product right away. Remember, consumers are willing to pay a premium to get you product overnight. They want it now!!
MERCHANT ACCOUNT - Service bureaus that handle order taking for you will almost certainly require you to have your own merchant account. Without a merchant account, you will not be able to accept credit card payments. Needless to say, this will seriously affect your overall sales figures. If you do not have your own merchant account to process credit card orders, it is essential that you use a service bureaus or enter into a joint marketing venture with a company that is able to extend you this privilege.
ACCEPTING CHECKS OVER THE PHONE - Don’t limit your phone in sales to credit card holders. By expanding the way TV viewers can pay for their purchases, you increase you probability of making a sale (with the introduction of checks-by-ph9one, your potential market is likely to grow by another 30%). Check Verification makes you product available to millions of people who do not have a credit card but do have a checking account. Here are some practical reasons why you should consider accepting check orders over the phone:
IT COMMITS THE BUYER - The buyer doesn’t have to write a check, write his name and address on a piece of paper, look for an envelope, get postage, and then mail the order. These steps can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. The longer it takes, the higher the odds your potential buyer will change his mind.
INSTANT GRATIFICATION - Your customer’s order can be cleared and processed faster if he doesn’t have to mail a check which you bank has to clear before the order is processed. With Check Verification, you get the money within 48 hours and you customer receives you product sooner.
COMPETITIVE RATES - If your ticket price is over $59.00, you unit cost to process a check order by phone will be almost the same as the commission the bank charges your merchant account. As this service become more readily available, and as merchant account become more difficult to acquire, accepting check orders over telephone is a feature DRTV marketers can no longer ignore.
CONTINUITY PROGRAMS - Develop a product or service that will fit into your back-end marketing program. Remember, the easiest person to sell is one who has already purchased from you.
A continually program will product sales or products or services to customers who have just made a purchase through an infomercial. The best way to promote a continuity item is through a brochure or other sales literature inserted with the original order.
Developing a successful continuity program will only enhance you bottom line, particularly since your advertising message is usually delivered at not additional expense to you. Furthermore, your continuity item is being offered to satisfied customers, because your company made their TV buying pleasant and satisfying.
SEEK RELATED ITEMS - Continuity items should normally be related to the initial product. The consumer purchases your initial product to satisfy a specific need, so it stands to reason that auxiliary products catering to this same need stand a higher chance of success than totally unrelated products. For example: If an exercise machine is you main product in the infomercial, a monthly vitamin subscription plan can be an ideal continuity program of you.; It is related to the customer’s original need (to be healthy and fit), and you can count on a hefty profit margin because you advertising costs for the vitamin subscription are minimal.
RELATIONSHIP MARKETING - Continuity may also be looked at as a means to establish a marketing relationship with your customers. Through profile response cars and other dynamic data, you can product a catalog that features several products that cater to the needs and wants defined by your customer base.
To continue with the example above, you can offer your customer (who originally purchased exercise equipment via your infomercial) a wide variety of products and services in a catalog - duffel bags, running shorts, portable CD players, you name it. As the cost of acquiring new customers increases, selling more to the same customers expands the potential for DRTV in almost any market.
BE YOUR OWN COMPETITION - When a product becomes an infomercial success story, vultures hover in a hurry, trying to duplicate your product and you marketing campaign. Such competitors are called knock-offs.
In more cases, knock-offs are cheaper versions - in both quality and price. However, one of the most brilliant knock-off DRTV campaigns we’ve seen broke all the files:
1. The company introduced a product of a higher quality and at a higher price than the original.
2. Both products came from the same company, so the company was actually competing against itself.
3. The same celebrity hosted the infomercials for both products.
The product was Stair Climber Plus, an upscale version of its predecessor, Super Step. Both infomercials featured Bruce Jenner, clearly showing the manufacturer’s intent to present competition that did not exist - in the process preempting any legitimate competition. Neither infomercial mentioned the other product, and for a while they were running at the same time.
WHAT DOES THIS STRATEGY ACHIEVE? Producing your own knock-offs, by competing against yourself, preempts competitors by giving them less room to maneuver. Instead of competing with just one other brand, they have to position their products somewhere between the two that are already in the market.
BROADER MARKET FOR YOU - There is nothing wrong with producing a cheaper or more expensive version of your own product. It expands the appeal to other market segments that may be outside the range of you original product.
GUARANTEED SUCCESS - If people bought you original product, your knock -off is likely to score the same success with its respective market segment.
CREATES A BANDWAGON EFFECT - When viewers see two stair-climbing exercise gadgets competing against each other, it creates more awareness of stair-climbing as a method of exercise. Furthermore, the competition creates the sense that the product is both a popular and effective way to exercise.

What Is An Infomercial

What Is An Infomercial
Article Entitled: What Is An Infomercial
TV-13. WHAT IS AN INFOMERCIAL ?
The term infomercial refers to a very specific form of TV advertising. Let’s break apart the pieces and identify the parameters and ingredients of an infomercial.
1. An infomercial is an advertisement. 2. An infomercial must be program-long. 3. An infomercial must solicit a specific direct response from the viewer.
IT IS AN AD. First and foremost, an infomercial is simply another form of advertisement. It is a commercial message, and as such represents the viewpoints and serves the interest of the sponsor. It is a 'paid program.'
IT IS LONG FORM. Unlike conventional 30 and 60 second TV ads, an infomercial runs at least a half hour. The reason: a half hour is the smallest block of airtime a TV station will sell without interrupting its programming schedules. (NO program on TV is shorter than 30 minutes.)
IT SOLICITS A 'DIRECT' RESPONSE. An infomercial must solicit a response which is specific and quantifiable. The solicitation and the delivery of the response must be direct between the advertiser and the viewer.
Unfortunately, the term infomercial is not universally understood in the industry, and infomercials may be called different things by different people.
The list of official sounding names, from 'documercials' to 'long-form advertising' is 'paid programming,' is endless and can be confusing: some term do not adequately define the scope of this new form of advertising.
For example, the term long-form advertising seems to be a favorite among media people. Unfortunately, the term describes only the time aspect, disregarding purpose and content. Of course, it does reflect the focus of those in TV circles, as opposed to the broader perspective of those in the marketing community. What will become of the term long-form advertising when paid advertising program extend to an hour or longer? Will we upgrade the term to longer-form advertising and then longest-form advertising?
By contrast, the term direct response advertising is obviously of a marketing heritage. But like the former, the term is incomplete because it does not qualify the medium being used. Mail order is also a form of direct response advertising.
Finally, there are those who feel uncomfortable with the term infomercial because it sounds too gimmicky or colloquial.
We think otherwise. More and more companies re accepting and using the term infomercial, and because of that we feel it will stand the test of time.
WHAT ARE DRTV SPOTS? The term DRTV spot as used in this report refers to standard length direct response advertisements that are aired within or between regularly scheduled programs.
Like infomercials, DRTV spots are designed to solicit a specific direct response from the TV viewers. Unlike infomercials, however, they are not program-length ads. Although standard length is usually one or two minutes, spots may run anywhere from ten seconds to three minutes.
You product and the type of response you are trying to generate will dictate when DRTV spots may be more cost-effective than infomercials, and vice versa.
SOLICITING A RESPONSE: Infomercials and DRTV spots are both designed to solicit a specific response directly from TV viewers. What do you want the viewers to do? What do you want to get? These are the two fundamental questions you infomercial or DRTV spot must answer effectively.
Regardless of which form of advertising you use, certain rules always apply:
Be Explicit: Tell the viewers exactly what you want them to do. Some advertisers get so engrossed highlighting the fantastic features of their product, they bury their solicitation message and fail to stress what they want the TV viewers to do.
Be Direct: Solicit a response that is direct - and measurable. If your objective is to get the consumers to visit their nearest shopping center to look for your product, this is not direct response advertising/. Infomercials and DRTV spots require the viewer to respond directly to you (the advertiser).
Must Be Measurable: The response must be quantifiable. Even if you’re running a simple opinion poll, the response must be something that can be measured in a way that defines the success or failure of either the advertisement itself or of the product being advertised.
LEADS OR SALES: Infomercials and DRTV spots commonly solicit either a direct purchase or an inquiry about a product. Again, be explicit. don’t give the viewer an option. If you do, your response mix will be inaccurate, confusing, and counterproductive.
LEAD GENERATION: A lead generation infomercial or DRTV spot asks the viewers to call your toll-free 800 number and to leave their name and address to receive additional sales information about you product or service.
SALES GENERATION: A sales generation infomercial or DRTV spot prompts the viewer to call your toll-free 800 number to place an order for you product or service, paying by credit card or COD.
STICK WITH A SINGLE RESPONSE OBJECTIVE; ANYTHING ELSE IS PURE WINDFALL. Your infomercial that solicits viewers to make a direct purchase may also generate calls requesting additional information. Although these unsolicited calls must be treated as highly qualified leads, they cannot be used to measure the actual success of you infomercial. Since you principal objective is to generate direct dollar sales, all the calls that generated leads must be treated as windfall.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN CUSTOMERS TO GO THE SHOPPING CENTER LOOKING FOR YOUR PRODUCT ? As a rule of thumb, infomercials and DRTV spots are never designed to encourage retail sales. However, some consumers want to look and see a product before they purchase it. Others don’t have a credit card or fail to note the ordering information provided in you infomercial.
This large contingent of potential customers can provide you with extra profits from retail sales generated by your infomercial or DRTV spot. An increase in retail sales of a number of products has been directly attributed to infomercials or DRTV spots. For example, exercise machines like the ThighMaster and certain types of sunglasses, like BluBlockers, have enjoyed increased retail sales due to direct response advertising by the aggressive marketers of those products.
CREATING A TREND. Direct response pioneers like The JuiceMan and The Juice Tiger sold truckloads of juice extractors with their infomercials. These two competing brands, however, did more than sell juice machines on television - they convinced consumers that juice was important and showed them how juice machines can help them lead healthier, happier lives.
Consequently, these infomercials helped the retail sales of almost every brand of juice maker. With their new awareness, consumers became receptive to the idea of owning a juice machine. Suddenly a product line that once collected dust on department store shelves became a top seller. Stores began merchandising juice machines, allocating prime store footage to display different brands. Without any new advertising effort, juice-making machine manufacturers now enjoy additional retail sales that were generated by The JuiceMan and The Juice Tiger infomercials.
This example proves that an infomercial may effectively sell directly to a specific TV audience while simultaneously producing retail sales. You can see how retail sales can be generated without any additional advertising expense - since the infomercial or DRTV spot which prompted the retail sales actually paid for itself through direct sales to TV viewers.
OUTPERFORMING RETAIL SALES Moving consumers from conventional retail buying to direct response television buying is another triumph that demonstrates the power of infomercial marketer.
Until recently, women bought cosmetics from department stores or their Avon lady. Victoria Jackson began to sell complete systems exclusively through television infomercials. The only way customers could buy her products was by responding to her paid TV programming.
Prior to her infomercial, 3 out of every 4 Victoria Jackson customers bought cosmetics exclusively from department stores. In response to Jackson’s success, Avon is designing an infomercial campaign of their own.
A NEW FORM OF TV ADVERTISING Today’s infomercials are a far cry from the 'long-form' televised sales pitches (5 and 10 minute commercials) of the early ’60s. This was when half-hour shows sponsored by soap manufacturers gave birth to the term soap opera.
TV advertising three decades ago was largely confined to promotions which: (1) told viewers that a particular product with certain features existed, and (2) motivated viewers to go to the nearest retail outlet to buy the product. Television then, in the strict sense of the word, was nothing but an advertising medium.
Today television has evolved from a mere advertising medium into a dominant distribution vehicle. Today’s infomercials and direct response TV commercials go beyond product promotion. They actually give the consumer a means to directly purchase the merchandise being advertised. Conventional TV advertising presents a product that is available through retail outlets or a distribution network.
Direct response TV ads actually sell products direct to the TV viewers. Direct response marketing remained the domain of mail order and other print forms of direct marketing until television matured, and advertisers began to recognize its direct marketing potential.
In fact, the terms infomercial and DRTV spots came into being because television gives the advertisers a platform conducive to direct marketing.
Coverage 98% of all U. S. households have at least one television set. In this Electronic Age, TV has surpassed all other media as our primary source of information and entertainment.
Cable TV 60% of all TV households in the U. S. have cable service, providing a wide variety of channel selections in comparison to an all broadcast environment.
Longer Hours Since we’ve evolved away from being a 9 to 5 society, television executives recognized the profitable viewership base found in late night hours. Remember when TV stations signed off at midnight?
Airtime Availability With thousands of national, regional and local TV stations, and with extended programming hours, airtime is readily available. The growth of Cable TV, satellites, and superstitions has brought television a long way since the time when we only had CBS, NBC, and ABC.

LCD Technology

Moving pictures on a CRT TV do not exhibit any sort of "ghosting" because the CRT's phosphor, charged by the strike of electrons, emits most of the light in a very short time, under 1 ms, compared with the refresh period of e.g. 20 ms (for 50 fps video). In LCDs, each pixel emits light of set intensity for a full period of 20 ms (in this example), plus the time it takes for it to switch to the next state, typically 12 to 25 ms.
The second time (called the "response time") can be shortened by the panel design (for black-to-white transitions), and by using the technique called overdriving (for black-to-gray and gray-to-gray transitions); however this only can go down to as short as the refresh period.
This is usually enough for watching film-based material, where the refresh period is so long (1/24 s, or nearly 42 ms), and jitter is so strong on moving objects that film producers actually almost always try to keep object of interest immobile in the film's frame.

Video material, shot at 50 or 60 frames a second, actually tries to capture the motion. When the eye of a viewer tracks a moving object in video, it doesn't jump to its next predicted position on the screen with every refresh cycle, but it moves smoothly; thus the TV must display the moving object in "correct" places for as long as possible, and erase it from outdated places as quickly as possible. LCD televisions are also a good component for video games.
Although ghosting was a problem when LCD TVs were newer, the manufacturers have been able to shorten response time to 2ms on many computer monitors and around an average of 8 ms for TVs.
There are two emerging techniques to solve this problem. First, the backlight of the LCD panel may be fired during a shorter period of time than the refresh period, preferably as short as possible, and preferably when the pixel has already settled to the intended brightness. This technique resurrects the flicker problem of the CRTs, because the eye is able to sense flicker at the typical 50 or 60 Hz refresh rates.

Another approach is to double the refresh rate of the LCD panel, and reconstruct the intermediate frames using various motion compensation techniques, extensively tested on high-end "100 Hz" CRT televisions in Europe. LCD technology is based on manipulation of polarized light. Two thin polarizing sheets are laminated to two glass substrates containing a thin layer of liquid-crystal. A regular 2-dimensional grid of electrodes allows each pixel in the array to be selected and activated individually. Several LCD technologies are used for the realization of large format television screens (e.g. TN, IPS, PVA, FFS), all in combination with active-matri addressing.
It had been widely believed that LCD technology was suited only to smaller sized flat-pane televisions at sizes of 40" or smaller. Early LCDs could not compete with plasma technology for screens larger than this because plasma held the edge in cost and performance. However, LCD TVs can now offer essentially the same performance.

LCD Vocab : Liquid crystal (LC)

When most solids melt, they form an isotropic fluid, whose optical, electrical and magnetic properties do not depend on direction. However, when some materials melt, over a limited temperature range they form a fluid that exhibits anisotropic properties. These materials generally consist of organic molecules that have an elongated shape, with a rigid central region and flexible ends. The molecules in a liquid crystal do not necessarily exhibit any positional order, but they do possess a degree of orientational order.
The anisotropic behaviour of liquid crystals is caused by the elongated shape of the molecules. The physical properties of the molecules are different when measured parallel or perpendicular to their length, and residual alignment of the rods in the fluid leads to anisotropic bulk properties. This residual alignment occurs as a result of preferential packing arrangements, and also electrostatic interactions between molecules that are most favourable (lowest in energy) in aligned configurations.
There are three types of liquid crystal: nematic, smectic and cholesteric. In the liquid crystalline phase, the vector about which the molecules are preferentially oriented, n, is known as the "director". The long axes of the molecules will tend to align in this direction.

In addition to the long range orientational order of nematic liquid crystals, smectic liquid crystals also have one dimensional long range positional order, the molecules being arranged into layers.
A cholesteric (or twisted nematic) liquid crystal is chiral: the molecules have left or right handedness. When the molecules align in layers, this causes the director orientation to rotate slightly between the layers, eventually bringing the molecules back into the original orientation. The distance required to achieve this is known as the pitch of the twisted nematic, as seen in the diagram above. The pitch is not equal to the distance marked x, because only 180º of rotation occurs over this length, so the molecules are aligned antiparallel to their starting orientation.

When viewed between crossed polars, thin films (approximately 10mm thick) of liquid crystals exhibit schlieren textures, as seen in the micrograph below, which shows a nematic liquid crystalline polymer.

Micrograph of nematic liquid crystalline polymer, courtesy of Professor TW Clyne and the DoITPoMS Micrograph Library (click on image to view larger version, or view full library record for the micrograph)

The black brushes are regions where the director is either parallel or perpendicular to the plane of polarisation of the incident radiation, and the points at which the brushes meet are known as disclinations.
If the temperature of a liquid crystal is raised, the constituent molecules have more energy, and are able to move and rotate more, so the liquid crystal becomes less ordered. As a result, the magnitude of the anisotropy of the bulk properties of the liquid crystal decreases, usually eventually resulting in an isotropic fluid.
Liquid crystals are used in many different applications, for example the displays on calculators, digital watches and mobile phones.

LCD Vocab : Pixel

In digital imaging, a pixel (picture element) is the smallest piece of information in an image. Pixels are normally arranged in a regular 2-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots, squares, or rectangles. Each pixel is a sample of an original image, where more samples typically provide a more accurate representation of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable; in color systems, each pixel has typically three or four components such as red, gree, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

A pixel is generally thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image. The definition is highly context sensitive; for example, we can speak of printed pixels in a page, or pixels carried by electronic signals, or represented by digital values, or pixels on a display device, or pixels in a digital camera (photosensor elements). This list is not exhaustive, and depending on context there are several terms that are synonymous in particular contexts, e.g. pel, sample, byte, bit, dot, spot, etc. We can also speak of pixels in the abstract, or as a unit of measure, in particular when using pixels as a measure of resolution, e.g. 2400 pixels per inch, 640 pixels per line, or spaced 10 pixels apart. The measures dots per inch (dpi) and pixels per inch (ppi) are sometimes used interchangeably, but have distinct meanings especially in the printer field, where dpi is a measure of the printer's density of dot (e.g. ink droplet) placement. For example, a high-quality photographic image may be printed with 600 ppi on a 1200 dpi inkjet printer. Even higher dpi numbers, such as the 4800 dpi often quoted by printer manufacturers since 2002, do not mean much in terms of achievable resolution.

The more pixels used to represent an image, the closer the result can resemble the original. The number of pixels in an image is sometimes called the resolution, though resolution has a more specific definition. Pixel counts can be expressed as a single number, as in a "three-megapixel" digital camera, which has a nominal three million pixels, or as a pair of numbers, as in a "640 by 480 display", which has 640 pixels from side to side and 480 from top to bottom (as in a VGA display), and therefore has a total number of 640 × 480 = 307,200 pixels or 0.3 megapixels.
The pixels, or color samples, that form a digitized image (such as a JPEG file used on a web page) may or may not be in one-to-one correspondence with screen pixels, depending on how a computer displays an image.
In computing, an image composed of pixels is known as a bitmapped image or a raster image. The word raster originates from television scanning patterns, and has been widely used to describe similar halftone printing and storage techniques.

LCD Vocab : Indium tin oxide (ITO)

Indium tin oxide (ITO, or tin-doped indium oxide) is a mixture of indium(III) oxide(In2O3) and tin(IV) oxide (SnO2), typically 90% In2O3, 10% SnO2 by weight. It is transparent and colorless in thin layers. In bulk form, it is yellowish to grey.
Indium tin oxide's main feature is the combination of electrical conductivity and optical transparency. However, a compromise has to be reached during film deposition, as high concentration of charge carriers will increase the material's conductivity, but decrease its transparency.
Thin films of indium tin oxide are most commonly deposited on surfaces by electron beam evaporation, physical vapor deposition, or a range of sputter deposition

ITO is mainly used to make transparent conductive coatings for liquid crystal displays, flat panel displays, plasma displays, touch panels, electronic ink applications, organic light-emitting diodes, solar cells,antistatic coatings and EMI shieldings. In organic light-emitting diodes, ITO is used as the anode (hole injection layer).
ITO has been used as a conductive material in the plastic electroluminescent lamp of toy Star Wars type lightsabers.
ITO is also used for various optical coatings, most notably infrared-reflecting coatings (hot mirrors) for architectural, automotive, and sodium vapor lamp glasses. Other uses include gas sensors, antireflection coatings, electrowetting on dielectrics, and Bragg reflectors for VCSEL lasers.
Reportedly, ITO is used as sensor coating in the Canon 400D/XTi and Sony Alpha DSLR-A100.
ITO thin film strain gauges can operate at temperatures up to 1400 °C and can be used in harsh environments, e.g. gas turbines, jet engines, and rocket engines.

LCD Vocab : Helix

A helix (pl: helices), from the Greek word έλιξ, is a three-dimensional, twisted shape. Common objects formed like a helix are a spring, a screw, and a spiral staircase (though the last would be more correctly called helical). Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is formed as two intertwined helices, and many proteins have helical substructures, known as alpha helices.

Helices can be either right-handed or left-handed. With the line of sight being the helical axis, if clockwise movement of the helix corresponds to axial movement away from the observer, then it is a right-handed helix. If counter-clockwise movement corresponds to axial movement away from the observer, it is a left-handed helix. Handedness (or chirality) is a property of the helix, not of the perspective: a right-handed helix cannot be turned or flipped to look like a left-handed one unless it is viewed through a mirror, and vice versa.
Here is another test for handedness: first grip the helix with your right hand and direct your thumb parallel to the axis of the helix. Then curl your fingers toward your palm, following the path of the spiral as if the helix were a set of rails that your fingers must slide along. If this causes your entire hand to move in the same direction as your thumb is pointing, then the helix is right-handed. If not, it is left-handed. Try this test on the left-handed helix in the picture below; in this case, your hand should move in the direction opposite to the way your thumb points.

Most hardware screws are right-handed helices. The alpha helix in biology as well as the A and B forms of DNA are also right-handed helices. The Z form of DNA is left-handed.
A double helix typically consists geometrically of two congruent helices with the same axis, differing by a translation along the axis, which may or may not be half-way.
A conic helix may be defined as a spiral on a conic surface, with the distance to the apex an exponential function of the angle indicating direction from the axis. An example of a helix would be the Corkscrew roller coaster at Cedar Point amusement park.
A circular helix has constant band curvature and constant torsion. The pitch of a helix is the width of one complete helix turn, measured along the helix axis. A curve is called a general helix if its tangent makes a constant angle with a fixed line in space.