Are Double Brands a Shortcut to DRTV Success?
Chart Watch (Week 46)
After nine weeks at No. 1 on the DRMetrix chart, BeActive Plus has been knocked off its perch by (what else) a Copper Fit campaign. Copper Fit Arch Relief Plus first tested in January of last year and now has 48 weeks on the chart. It was No. 2 the week before last, so we could see these campaigns switch places again. As for the rest of the top 10, two other Copper Fit campaigns occupy spots, and Emson campaigns are five of the remaining seven.1
That’s near the top. What about near the bottom? As I wrote about last week, here we tend to find the “steady eddies” of the industry, campaigns that do well at more modest levels of spending and tend to stick around. That probably means they are also the kind of campaign that pays ‘DR dividends’ with either some direct profitability or a sustainable subsidy from driving retail sales. They may also exist to support a brand or have a seasonal component that affects spending levels. Perhaps all three — which is what I suspect is the case with the campaign I’ve chosen to highlight today.
However, what I think is most interesting is the naming strategy.
Campaign: Sharper Image Calming Heat Knee Wrap
Marketer: Allstar Products Group
Producer: Hutton Miller
One day, I’ll do a deep dive on the success of double brands in DR product naming. It certainly makes sense on paper. You take a known brand (e.g. Sharper Image or Bell+Howell) and use it as an ‘umbrella’ over an unknown brand, raising awareness of your new brand while benefitting from the established brand’s halo. Allstar began this particular execution in 2018 with Sharper Image Calming Comfort, pivoted with Sharper Image Calming Heat by Calming Comfort2 and has now settled in here with Calming Heat as the sub-brand, dropping the Calming Comfort name.
The challenge with this approach is that human minds cannot possibly process and recall the number of words in these names. If anything, our minds tend to move in the opposite direction, generating nicknames and shorthand for things. This presents an interesting tension between a marketer’s twin goals of establishing credibility while also achieving memorability.
The first really long brand name that caused me to think about this was HD Vision Night Vision Wraparounds, which went on to become one of my 2014 True Top Spenders.3 The name works descriptively but would certainly fail a brand-recall survey.4 There are just too many messages in one name. It promises the user 1) high-definition vision, 2) night vision, and 3) wraparound coverage all at once. Many of those promises also raise questions — What does “HD” mean when not applied to TVs? Does “night vision” mean I can see in the dark like the military? — which further increase the cognitive load.
The name for this campaign is just as long, but by using a double brand the messaging doesn’t get as muddled. “Sharper Image” isn’t a promise, so it processes quickly. “Calming Heat” is a promise, but it flows together nicely with “Knee Wrap.” In fact, the words kind of overlap, reading together as “Heated Knee Wrap,” an effective description of the product. It works, and it’s also extendible — a fact not lost on Allstar. The marketer has also tested Calming Heat Neck Wrap and Calming Heat Back Wrap, among others.
As for this campaign, it first charted in February of this year, disappeared after the winter and has now resurfaced with seven weeks on the DRMetrix chart. If it ends up being the most successful of the Calming Heat wraps, that would also be interesting since DRTV history suggests the back pain item should have been the bigger winner.
No. 11 on the 2020 True Top 50
Incidentally, it appears as “HD Night Vision” on that chart and just “HD Night” in my database. See what I mean? Long names always get shortened.
So would “Sharper Image Calming Heat by Calming Comfort” or, worse, “Sharper Image Calming Comfort Calming Heat,” as it was sometimes rendered. You can see why they dropped the “Calming Comfort” on subsequent items. The printing costs alone! ;-)