direct marketing, but Royal Mail won't see any of it

[Geezer]

http://www.marketingdirectmag.co.uk/new ... Mail-wont/

CLIENT OF THE WEEK -

BrightHouse will spend £1.5m on pre-Xmas direct marketing, but Royal Mail won't see any of it


Rent-to-buy household retailer BrightHouse has just unveiled its biggest marketing spend ever - £1.5m on a pre-Xmas TV and door drop campaign. Here, BrightHouse marketing director Alan Beesley explains the retailer's 'community relationship' strategy and why he's giving Royal Mail a wide berth

Marketing Direct: Consumers pay by the week for BrightHouse goods - you must be having a good recession!
Alan Beesley: To some extent the market has changed in our favour but we're also benefiting from changes to the business and investments made across the board. The business has been completely redeveloped in terms of customer proposition - we've opened 40 stores in the past two years.

The heartland is Scotland, the North and the Midlands but we have opened a significant number of stories in the South of England - in Lincolnshire and in Aldershot, and we've just opened in Southend and Dartford.

Q: Your site promises "no credit checks". Isn't that a bit risky in today's environment?
The payment record of our customers is very stable. We've not seen a particular change in their habits. They're good budgeters and pay for things weekly.

We're a high street relationship business. The stores are based in the communities in which we serve and most of our staff live within that community. It's a know-your-customers model, basically. Ultimately that local manager makes that decision [to extend credit].

From our point of view it's about creating accessibility. We do ask customers to give us five references as a check so we can confirm that people are who they say they are.

Q: You're spending £1.5m in the run-up to Christmas. On which channels can we expect to see the TV ads appearing?
We're running a combination on terrestrial, digital and satellite - ITV, Channel 4, five, ITV 2, Fiver and a mixed station bag of niche stations, such as Living.

Q: Are you able to buy media more cheaply nowadays?
The key is not to chase the deal and to understand who your target audience is. With that as a building block, we've seen more [media] people coming to the table with deals.

Some of them are spot buys - channels we've not had on the schedule in the past asking us to consider them, to which we say ‘you need to give us a deal'. At the same time we reassure our regular channels with a certain amount of guaranteed spend over a certain timeframe.

We do two bursts of TV a year, in Spring and Autumn. September to December is peak time, as well as mid-March through to June.

Q: You're using local newspapers and TNT Doordrop Media to deliver catalogues. Is Royal Mail out of the picture?
We've excluded Royal Mail and have gone with Newshare [insertion in local newspapers] and TNT's own [delivery] teams.

We made that decision before the current strike, because we were really hurt by the 2007 strikes. Royal Mail own the 'last mile' – it's a monopoly situation and we are forced to accept that.

But in door-to-door we made a specific decision to avoid Royal Mail as a direct result of the 2007 strikes. That impacted significantly on the effectiveness of our door drops. We had big volumes in the pipeline and two weeks' distribution had to go into one.

Q: Has the decision been worth it?
No matter what business you're in, you should try and keep things in your own hands. If you can mitigate risk, do it. That's what we've done with door drops. We only do door drops two or three times a year.

If we were like Lidl and dropping every week, you could spread the load. But we can't. Newshare volumes have been falling, but where we haven't got Newshsare we use TNT's own teams and it's more expensive.

That's a key reason why we have moved towards using TNT's ‘HIT' targeting tool. We are looking at more granularity and round levels, improving the targeting and reducing the volumes, which helps reduce the distribution costs.

We are very much about ROI and have worked with the guys at TNT for three years at least. We work closely with TNT's planner Rob Wilcox.

In tests we've managed to maintain the level of impact because of the improved targeting. With our customer database and transactional data, together with TNT's Mosaic profiling tool, we know our return by postcode.

Q: To what extent does BrightHouse do digital, for example paid search?
We maintain what I call an infomercial website designed to provide a first contact point to explain the proposition. Consumers can make an expression of interest by giving us their email address. There is no pre-qualification, but if you decide to buy, we do capture your email data.

We have done paid search and affiliate in the past. And to be honest, we found that the majority of our customers respond to TV, and that they're predominantly a day-time audience. And the results we get from TV advertising in website traffic spikes mean we don't have to invest in paid search - at present.

We are now finding that when the ads run, the number of hits to the site rises significantly. It suggests to me that people are happy to access the internet while watching the TV, rather than picking up the phone.

Q: High street stores...an infomercial website...isn't your proposition a bit old fashioned?
Our proposition is unique in that we're the only furniture provider on a payment-by-week basis. There is a store card but in terms of high street presence, we are unique.

We are very much a community-based retailer, so a high street presence is fundamental to us as a business. Our customers tend to be on a budget and generally come into the stores every week – we know them by name and it's a face-to-face relationship.

So we will be expanding that - we're opening 20 stores each year in the UK.

- ends -

[rhino49]

I think we can cope without their "door drops" - we have four scheduled next week and I can't remember the last time I had less than three - the fall in mail volumes now has me down to eight bags a day from a regular 5 - 6 so I don't have room for any more waste paper. Did I say "down" to eight - see, even I am beginning to believe Lord Mandelson's spin about falling mail volumes!

[mailman337]

Nice one Rhino!!!! :cfo :mfo

[somerset]

TNT,S OWN DOOR DROP TEAMS !!! Next time you get your boxes of d2ds read the little white label first. At least one a week reads TNT !!!! We doing the work for them. I kid you not

[rhino49]

TNT,S OWN DOOR DROP TEAMS !!! Next time you get your boxes of d2ds read the little white label first. At least one a week reads TNT !!!! We doing the work for them. I kid you not

Absolutely - they couldn't cope, can't cope and won't cope - pretenders to a crown they will never wear. Like all the other DSA companies they are parasites on a regal beast made weak by the careless attitude of it's owner - the government !

[jacee]

I'm glad we won't be handling that account cos it won't be good for our image. Most of the stuff brighthouse sells won't last until the weekly payments are completed. Then again we have a lot of cheap and nasty stuff in RM. Guess where ?

[sevenandseven]

Will these ' TNT delivery teams' be the same people that were delivering leaflets on my walk this week. Chattering away on a mobile phone in a language that was not English, leaving the leaflets half out of the letterbox so when you put your letters in their leaflets fall on the ground, walking across people's gardens ( still chattering on their phone ), missing out houses where the drive looks a little too long, and dumping bundles of leaflets in the lobby of the flats because they cannot be bothered to go up the stairs. A quality service!

[Fred B]

Will these ' TNT delivery teams' be the same people that were delivering leaflets on my walk this week. Chattering away on a mobile phone in a language that was not English, leaving the leaflets half out of the letterbox so when you put your letters in their leaflets fall on the ground, walking across people's gardens ( still chattering on their phone ), missing out houses where the drive looks a little too long, and dumping bundles of leaflets in the lobby of the flats because they cannot be bothered to go up the stairs. A quality service!

This is the future mate!

[DGP1]

If I remember right, didn't Brighthouse have a really bad press not so long ago (I think it was about people who missed 1 or 2 payments getting people at their doors demanding the items back).

[rhino49]

Will these ' TNT delivery teams' be the same people that were delivering leaflets on my walk this week. Chattering away on a mobile phone in a language that was not English, leaving the leaflets half out of the letterbox so when you put your letters in their leaflets fall on the ground, walking across people's gardens ( still chattering on their phone ), missing out houses where the drive looks a little too long, and dumping bundles of leaflets in the lobby of the flats because they cannot be bothered to go up the stairs. A quality service!

Aha - so you have spotted them as well

[postgirl*]

with interest rates of nigh on 30% per annum its not surprising they can afford to pay for advertising no matter who with. its companies like this that government should be outlawing,they thrive on the needy.

[chewi]

with interest rates of nigh on 30% per annum its not surprising they can afford to pay for advertising no matter who with. its companies like this that government should be outlawing,they thrive on the needy.

open your eyes girl! The whole of the establishment and their supporters(Capital) thrive off the sweat and tears of the workers and the needy.

[smokerjim]

I'm glad we won't be handling that account cos it won't be good for our image. Most of the stuff brighthouse sells won't last until the weekly payments are completed. Then again we have a lot of cheap and nasty stuff in RM. Guess where ?

I wouldn't call £3 million quid "cheap" :cfo :cfo :cfo

[simonj12]

So they're using TNT because they were badly affected by the previous strikes. But if TNT pass it onto RM to deliver anyway..........? I give up.

[smokerjim]

So they're using TNT because they were badly affected by the previous strikes. But if TNT pass it onto RM to deliver anyway..........? I give up.

Maybe each office should load up a van with their d2ds, then take them round to the nearest BrightHouse office, and say "We heard you didn't trust us to deliver these for you, so you paid TNT to do it ( and paid more than we would ask for ).....but TNT f****d it up, so here you go, get on the blower to TNT and offer them a second chance - or get your money from them & come crawling back to us!"