Marketer vs. Retailer - Why the sudden shift in use?
After 16 years in direct response, the word “retailer” is being used by ERA as a catch-all for marketers and retailers alike. I don’t know about you, but this confuses me. For as many years as I can remember, a marketer was quite different than a retailer. In DR, the company that sold direct to the consumer via TV, radio or online was a marketer. The core reason DR exists is because inventors used DR as a platform to launch their products and build awareness because it was impossible (and still is) to get into retail. Ask anyone who’s been around, that’s the basis of this industry. The retailer has always been the monster that DR was used to get on the shelf at Target, Wal-Mart, Costco, Bed Bath and Beyond—bricks and mortars if you will. With that, just because a retailer uses the online space and uses direct-to-consumer tactics to increase traffic and sell goods doesn’t suddenly turn them into a DR marketer, does it? And vice-versa for the DR marketers such as Sylmark, Savvier, Beach Body, Guthy Renker and the like; they aren’t suddenly transformed into retailers because their products eventually end up in stores or are available online.
I don’t know about you, but I find this not only confusing, but incredibly perplexing. Why has the definition suddenly changed? Or better yet, has it? And why by an association? No one I know has adjusted their vocabulary to match. Oddly enough, just a few years ago, ERA could care less about retailers. To accept them by calling all marketers in this space “retailers” is muddying the very existence of direct response marketing. Has the word marketer been eliminated from our vernacular in direct response due to ERA using it incorrectly or misinterpreting the definition? I’ve been in meetings where seasoned DR executives have all said “It’s marketer not retailer.”Does this mean the DR marketer is gone for good, or just the name? Do they all become a retailer or a wholesaler? And then what the heck is a marketer? We can’t abolish them completely. And then do all the marketers, I mean retailers, I don’t know what I mean…become middlemen? You know, the ones we love to cut out of the equation to make the offer so compelling to the consumer.
With growth and change come new technology, new ideas and new venues to increase the overall ROI. But, do we need to challenge the English language and redefine a word that has been used for 30 years in its wake? Recently, Barbara Tulipane, CEO of ERA, said in an interview, “Eight hundred and forty nine retailers attended the annual conference.” Really? Was that 849 individual retail companies? If so, that’s great. That’s in the traditional sense of the word. But then again, I’m not sure what she meant, are you?
Let’s keep the differentiation between the two solid. If we start to blend together the innate differences between a DR marketer and retailer, then all the years of hard work defending ourselves from bashing, building customer loyalty and support, fighting for rights on Capitol Hill, giving opportunity to inventors and entrepreneurs around the world, and being a group of diehards with incredible marketing skills proving that DR is to be taken seriously may be gone forever.
What are your thoughts?
Wendi Cooper, C Spot Run Productions
Tags: Direct Response, ERA, marketers, retailers, wendi cooper
December 7th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
It’s not so much that ERA has or is trying to change this definition. But, in reality it’s been the industry itself. Direct response has gained more traction and validity through TV, radio and the Internet and as media avenues continue to blend, we’ve all actually become a multichannel melting pot. ERA has and will always continue to value it’s DRTV members, but at the same time, ERA can’t remain in the dark ages and must continue to pursue multichannel retailers as the alternative makes us outdated and left in the dust.
The similarity that ERA has drawn to both words is that retailers and marketers both represent product and are selling directly to the consumer. Even as we’ve focused our membership recruiting in this direction, we still differentiate between the two but have them both in the retail cluster. If you look at our recently rebranded application it says Retailer/Marketer. They are together because their dues and benefits are the same yet differ from the supplier side.
As far as the 849 retailers, Barbara was referring to individuals that sell or represent product, not separate companies. We certainly aren’t here to take anybody out of the equation, in fact, we are here to solidify and strengthen the world that sells directly to the consumer.
Robin Greenspan, ERA director of membership sales
December 9th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Welcome to the brave new world where the distinct between a marketer and a retailer reminds one of Justice Potter Stewart’s comment on obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” One example: Costco is a bricks a mortar retailer, a manufacturer or marketer of products under the Kirkland private label brand, and a direct marketer who sells both marketer-bred brand products such as Sony as well as their own goods online. The terms retailer and marketer no longer fit into tidy buckets. Like all things that evolve, the new order will be sorted out in time as catchphrases, like products, establish themselves (or don’t) along the adoption lifecycle.
December 11th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Where’s the confusioni? Call ‘em anything you want: retailer, electronic retailer, virtual retailer, direct marketer, direct to consumer retailer/marketer. To me it’s all the same. People who sell directly or even indirectly and try to elicit a direct response from a potential buyer are one and the same person. The end goal is to sell product. It’s all about the methods we use not the name we go by or go under. Labels, definitions and titles may change, but the people who do whatever it is they do are the same people. How ’bout this for an example: when I first started in the advertising buisiness, a finshed spot or show was put on a 2′ Hi-Band Master, then a 1″ Master, now it could be a BetaSp, HD or DigBeta Master . That over 20 years of name and technology evolution, but the end result is the same. Call me whatever you want :D!