Cold Calls, Hot Topics
DIRECT RESPONSE does better in business media than in consumer media. For business, it’s Horatio Alger; for consumers, film noir.
Small business publication Your Company covered DRTV and e-commerce in its June/July issue. In “Teen Inc.,” a roundup of Gen-Y entrepreneurs, the magazine profiled K.K. Gregory, a teenager who developed Wristies, fleece wrist warmers for cold weather. In six minutes on QVC, the article relates, Gregory sold $22,000 worth of Wristies. FedEx is a customer and it alone buys thousands for its drivers. Your Company also includes a how-to article on “Treating Online Customers Like Gold.” Written by NetCreations Inc. president Rosalind Resnick, the piece recommends becoming e-mail accessible; building an electronic mailing list; and making shopping a snap. And here we thought e-commerce was supposed to make shopping a click.
Direct response is also turning up in more and more books. Bruce Lane and Scott Wyatt’s “New York’s 50 Best Places to Eat Southern” (City & Country, 1998) includes a chapter entitled “Virtual Vittles,” “a sampling of the Southern comestibles, communities and culture” the authors found on the Net. Very nice and all that, but we do wonder about ordering chitlins online (www.chitlinmarket.com).
Ex-telemarketer Jason Starr has authored “Cold Caller,” a fictional thriller chronicling the unsavory adventures of a cold caller turned cold-blooded killer. It’s deadpan without actually being funny.
On the subject of film noir, we smiled at Thelma Adams’ review of “A Perfect Murder” in the June 5 New York Post. Commenting on the clothes-horse character played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Adams wrote, “This heiress isn’t so much a character as a catalog of material desires.” She goes on to say, “If only this thriller-loosely lifted from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” by Patrick Smith Kelly-came with a 1-800 number.” Perhaps the remake should have been called “Dial M for Merchandise.”
