Electronic Retailer - October 2011 - 64

Lockard &
Wechsler Direct
Dick Wechsler
President & CEO
Lockard & Wechsler Direct is a full-service direct
marketing agency with 40 years of experience
helping clients make their advertising make
money. Dick Wechsler is president and CEO of
Lockard & Wechsler Direct.
What are the advantages of working with
a direct response agency, as opposed to a
traditional marketing agency?
While general advertising is centered on creative
expression and audience penetration, direct marketing
is grounded in targeted, responsive, measurable
communication. A marketer interested
on generating sales or qualifi ed leads, building a
relationship with the customer and building measurable,
profi table campaigns are best served by
direct marketing agencies.
What products are hot in the direct response
marketing industry right now?
Practical innovation continues to drive product
success. Magic Mesh, for example, is a remarkably
clever solution to keeping screens closed and
bugs out. EZ Moves helps anyone move heavy furniture.
The Myashi Pillow is simply a better, more
affordable massage pillow. And P90X continues to
shine as the gut-busting workout of choice.
As consumers shift to buying more products
online versus over the phone, how have
direct response campaigns adjusted to
reflect this change?
The most important change is incorporating online
and offl ine results into a single bottom line. TV
drives web results. When tracked and optimized
as one, the combined channel delivers greater
scale and effi ciencies. The next big challenge is for
DRTV advertisers to learn how to scale web marketing
campaigns independent of TV.
What role do you feel social media should
play in a client’s DR campaign?
Reputation management is probably the No. 1 role
for social media today for direct marketers. So
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electronicRETAILER | Direct Response Marketing Guide 2011
much information and opinion is shared over social
networks that it is critical for any marketer to
track what’s being said and share in that conversation.
All of us would like to better commoditize
the social networks, but I think we’re a ways off
from accomplishing that in a scaled way.
How much involvement do you have with
the creative process of a DRTV campaign?
How do you assure clients that the creative,
the media buying and the distribution will
be seamless?
Lockard & Wechsler is a full-service agency. For
many of our clients we do everything – from creative
development through telemarketing management
and media buying and optimization. While
we always are willing to offer creative counseling
and services, our involvement largely depends on
each client’s needs.
What media inventory is biggest in
2011 – cable or broadcast? Which do you
recommend your clients get into?
This is really a long-form/short-form question. For
infomercials, local broadcast seems to be the area
for greatest success. For short-form, national cable
remains the No. 1 media choice. However, we do
continue to incorporate local broadcast, national
syndication and the national broadcast networks
into nearly every campaign we manage.
In 2011, how important is the speed in which
you track campaign results and then tweak
a campaign accordingly?
Speed is always important. We track, analyze and
optimize every campaign every day. It takes three
to fi ve days to make a change to a campaign that
is on air. Every day you delay that buy management
pushes the revision further back. So, speed
is very important. Failure to act quickly is very
costly in terms of money lost on underperforming
media and opportunity lost on media that should
be expanded.
What type of technology do you use to help
marketers track their media dollars?
We have a proprietary system called MediaPro.
It’s been operational, mission critical and continuously
enhanced for 15 years now. As an agency,
we invest $1 million annually and system development
and syndicated research.
Electronic Retailer - October 2011

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