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Every day the news from the multichannel retail sector points to a very stark dichotomy in fortunes – on the one hand a growing litany of company administrations or downsizing of household name high street retail brands, and on the other an explosion of exponential growth in the pureplay online sector with Amazon and Ocado reporting record growth of sales since March 2020. Prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic many high street retailers were already struggling with unrelenting changes in consumer buying behaviour as online sales continued to grow unabated year on year. The recent global crisis, however, has turbo charged the growth in online sales with the overall percentage having increased from 21% to over 34% of all retail sales (source: Office of National Statistics) – a staggering increase of 50% in real terms over three months. As non-essential retailers opened on the high street again under social distanced restrictions, an initial spike in demand has fallen back to an average of circa 40% year on year comparison in many cases. Whilst Government has decreased the financial burden in the short and medium term via assistance with both rates suspension and the furlough scheme for employees, the fiscal reality of ‘new normal’ trading conditions will return during the final quarter of 2020 as businesses are gradually weaned off this vital State economic support. Whilst the pandemic clearly represents the biggest existential threat to high street retailers for those that have invested in a strong online multichannel presence, this has also been an opportunity for them to further migrate their businesses to digital. Many audiences, especially those in the mature sector, have been virtually forced to adopt buying online since March 2020 and are now likely to remain digital customers; further changing the demographics of this audience. So what does the future hold for high street retail in the short to mid-term? Until a vaccine for Covid-19 has been established and widely distributed in the UK footfall and retail sales will inevitably be greatly diminished for the foreseeable future, but it is unlikely that operational fixed costs can be commensurately trimmed to manage this inevitable downside in revenue. Whilst the current Government is proving to be largely supportive with its fiscal policies, there is a limit to how far this can be realistically stretched and therefore we can only anticipate some further casualties especially in Quarter Four and this to be accelerated into the first six months of 2021 if the key Christmas trading period fails to deliver. As Retailers grapple with the ‘new normal’ business model this will also have a massive knock on effect for many brands and product owners who have been very dependent on them for the majority of their sales in the UK. Many Brands prior to the Covid-19 crisis have embraced the importance of the growth of their own direct to consumer digital activities and during the last quarter have reaped the benefit of their investment as consumers have exponentially migrated online. As 2020 progresses the question for both Retailers and Brands is not whether online sales will continue to grow, but how can they manage this radically new commercial landscape and all its inherent challenges.

In the last six months of 2019 some of the biggest technology and entertainment global brands have entered the already highly competitive Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) UK online broadcast sector previously dominated by NetFlix and Amazon. Whilst SVoD platforms provide relatively low-cost monthly subscriptions to grow their audience base they are also required to produce new high-quality viewing content to achieve differentiation and customer growth – this double-edged sword leads to questions regarding the long-term financial viability of these media operations in the 2020s. The new SVoD entrants include AppleTV+, Disney+ and most recently the joint venture between the BBC and ITV – BritBox.  There are yet more major companies coming into the UK SVoD marketplace in 2020, including WarnerMedia, that will increase intense competition in this online broadcast medium distributed by broadband infrastructure. To date SVoD media operations are dependent almost purely on monthly subscription fees, as opposed to above the line advertising revenues which traditional broadcasters, including ITV and Channel Four, have been reliant on to drive their commercial existence. Content creation, and most importantly new exclusive content creation by platform, defines the lines drawn in the fundamental battleground for this new SVoD dawn in broadcasting.  The year on year growth in this relatively new sector in the UK has been formidable with NetFlix now boasting penetration of 11.8million UK homes whilst Amazon Prime has reached 6.4million.  The commensurate costs to compete in this most aggressive of media marketplaces in terms of new content creation is turning into a media arms race and will inevitably test the nerve and finances of even the biggest global corporations. In terms of the end consumer/viewer the monthly cost for SVoD in the UK remains comparatively low at circa £5.99-£8.99 versus Sky Digital and Virgin Media packages.  The successful SVoD business model to gain profitable traction has to be both very competitively priced, and also attract mass scale and penetration to ultimately achieve financial viability. The conundrum faced, however, is that mass scale by market can only be delivered by producing a constant flow of new and expensive content to attract, grow and critically retain new subscribers.  It is estimated that $250billion will have been invested in 2019 on new content in this his burgeoning SVoD industry, and this is investment is forecast to grow to between $250-$300billion in 2020. This new commercial model is testing the mettle or the biggest of commercial monoliths to gain hegemony of the SVoD sector – by way of example Disney+ forecasts their breakeven model being reached by 2024 when a range of 60-90milllion individual monthly subscribers has been attained.  This will be a long game driven by financial muscle and competitive attrition. SVoD companies, due to their inherent scale and global coverage, have the ability to amortise their new content budgetary investments across key international markets, as long as their subscriptions grow as they are forecasting them to.  With more major entrants into the market fighting for subscriptions though, will this become a fight to the bottom and will advertising ultimately have to be introduced on these platforms in the short term to make the SVoD model financially viable and sustainable? This global reach and new content distribution by SVoD companies is in turn creating major challenges for local traditional broadcasters who are dwarfed by this level of content investment.  This challenge in the UK is exacerbated by deficits in traditional broadcast viewing audiences, driven by structural changes in generational broadcasting consumption reducing both their advertising revenues and commensurate ratings year on year. This in turn is causing an unprecedented impact on the linear TV advertising model, and a real problem for traditional broadcasters looking ahead into the new decade.  This does, however, open up opportunities for less conventional television advertising in longer Direct Response formats, which bring incremental revenue for broadcasters and interesting new opportunities for advertisers willing to test this medium. The fight for viewing audiences of the UK, whether from free to air platforms via SVoD or satellite/cable, is set to become even fiercer as we enter the 2020s.  It is virtually impossible to predict who will ultimately dominate the SVoD UK sector, but they will certainly require bravery, very deep pockets and a long-term patient view.

Nike announced this week that they will be withdrawing from their two-year pilot trial with Amazon to take full control of their own D2C selling strategy.  They will also simultaneously be placing some of their wholesale agreements with third party retailers ‘under review’ as they seek to take greater control of their global product distribution. On the face of it this news would appear to counter to the logic of the new multichannel retail world with Amazon now accounting for 37.7% of all online sales in the US market, and 51.6% in the UK.  The logic followed that Amazon was too big to commercially ignore and brands could not realistically prosper without being listed on this key global online retail platform. Whilst Amazon offers both massive scale and audience reach in virtually every market they operate in, there is clearly a growing concern amongst established brands that ultimately these clear benefits no longer outweigh the longer-term threat to their business model. As D2C sales become increasingly important, as the online market continually grows and generational buying habits migrate towards direct buying, Nike have signalled that they would rather now standalone and dictate their own pricing and service business model than be listed on Amazon. Amazon clearly offers volume sales for almost any product brand but there are two material trading caveats that are becoming increasingly troubling in the changing multichannel retail world: Amazon set their retail pricing dynamically using their own algorithm which often undercuts both direct and indirect competition, and Amazon own all the customer data for all transactions on their platform for the purposes of remarketing.  As D2C online selling is forecast to become 30% of all retail sales by 2030 these trading factors are now becoming under increasing scrutiny and concern. Nike are pursuing an aligned global strategy looking ahead, by growing both their own branded store presence and by taking full control of their D2C marketing.  They are setting an industry precedent that may precipitate a fundamental change of thinking about how other brands deal with Amazon in the decade ahead. Looking into the decade of the 2020’s the key fundamental question for brands is how with they deal with the growing dominance of Amazon and its inherent trading implications.  Ultimately the choice is binary – adopt a standalone D2C strategy as Nike have, to enable control of their retail pricing, customer service and profits, or continue to trade with Amazon, thus sacrificing control but maintaining global reach and scale through this goliath online department store.

In the 2019 multichannel retail world in the UK – the world’s most dominant e-commerce market by overall percentage of all retail sales – almost 20% of all products and services are now purchased online (source: Office for National Statistics 2019). Multichannel retail industry sector forecasters are predicting that the ratio of online sales could, within the next decade, reach as high as 30% of the entire UK retail market as the role of the High Street outlet continues to evolve and adapt in accordance with this platform migration in consumer buying behaviour. For Retailers and Brands who have relied on their retail wholesale customers to sell the lion share of their products and services historically, and have not managed to establish and scale their direct to consumer sales strategy to date, this challenge will become ever greater as overall online sales continue to grow.  In short 20% of their overall sales should be direct to consumer in 2019 in order for them to keep up to pace with the rapidly changing UK retail landscape. The need to align sales and marketing ambitions to match the multichannel retail environment will become exponentially greater as they strive to meet the current demands of the multichannel based consumer.  For many companies who, for a myriad of reasons, are behind the curve in terms of the ratio of their direct to consumer sales versus the overall retail market this challenge will become increasingly harder to manage looking ahead. For Retailers to face this fundamental multichannel challenge ultimately means tackling the inherent issue of retaining too much retail physical space versus declining retail sales per square foot.  For Brands this requires sensitive communication to Retail wholesale customers that they now need to explicitly develop their own direct selling operations to face this commercial challenge and prosper looking ahead too. These fundamental operational changes clearly are both challenging to implement and will cause material disruption to staff, operations and commercial relationships in the multichannel retail sector – but will ultimately define commercial survival in the 2020’s. It is worth noting, however, that the published figures of circa 20% online of all UK retail sales includes pureplay online monolith of Amazon.co.uk, who sell virtually 100% of their merchandise and services via the internet and now account for over 51% of all online sales in the UK in 2019. On the flip side, as part of their recently announced multichannel UK expansion plans Amazon are now branching into Bricks and Mortar retailing, growing their presence in the more traditional format on the High Street in the UK selling both books and a wider merchandise offering including grocery.  Multichannel appears to be going full circle for those operators whose consumer offering is connected and ‘360 degrees’ in terms of its consumer touchpoint implementation. Multichannel thinking applies more than ever to Retailers and Brands who want to survive and prosper as we enter the next decade.  In these times of uncertainty in the multichannel retail world with bankruptcies continuing for household name brands on the High Street on a virtual weekly basis – Mothercare being the latest established retailer to fall into administration announced today – it would appear that the previous way of doing business with the new consumer needs to be, in many cases, radically addressed otherwise other significant casualties are inevitable in the decade ahead.

The UK TV advertising market has been long established as the most stringent worldwide in relation to independent regulation, with all TV adverts being required to be pre-approved via Clearcast (previously known as the BACC) prior to airing on TV channels across the UK. This unique regulatory body, funded by the key broadcast media owners, ensures that all UK advertisers adhere to the ASA BCAP Code, whereby all claims in the advert are both independently proven and substantiated. This thorough methodology instigated by Clearcast is employed by Media Owners to create a balanced ‘playing field’ for all marketers in the UK who wish to employ broadcast TV, and furthermore to help to protect the end-consumer against false claims for TV advertised products and services. In recent years, as social media platforms have become ubiquitous in daily consumer media consumption, an extraordinary level of new video advertising content can be produced and published instantaneously by both individuals and companies alike. This new marketing era has created a huge challenge for both Regulators and Media Owners alike in terms of regulation in the UK. The consumer also has growing concerns too – the MEDIA Nations 2019 Report published by OFCOM in August reported 45% of all adults think that all types of online video content should now be regulated. Regulation of social media video advertising in many ways is based on the same premise as many foreign territories, including the United States, whereby advertisers are able to air copy on TV on the assumption that they have adhered to the published regulatory guidelines, as opposed to the pre-clearance process in the UK. If advertisers are found ‘after the fact’ to have abused the given guidelines, then they often face post broadcast reprimand by Regulators – in the most severe case criminal prosecution and ultimately exclusion. This absence of pre-clearing video advertising copy on social media platforms can be argued to give advertisers a greater creative license to market their wares to a global and continually growing audience. However, this lack of regulatory control has led to recent global negative publicity for the social media platforms, notably Facebook, and enabled these media owners to become unintended promotional vehicles for highly undesirable content; creating considerable political and social unease globally. Whilst the sheer volume of new content produced on a second by second basis is virtually impossible to adequately police satisfactorily, new investment by Facebook/Instagram in terms of increased human monitoring and enhanced technology may help to improve the standards applied to video advertising published online looking ahead. Confidence badly needs to be re-established in these social media platforms, but without regulatory strength this is going to be a difficult goal to achieve and legitimate advertisers will ultimately suffer under the weight of mistrust. That said we would also question whether the UK regulatory bodies are taking this a ‘step too far’ for TV advertisers? The rulings this week by the ASA against PHILADELPHIA and VOLKSWAGEN for their recent TV advertising for what they deem to be ‘offensive gender stereotyping’ content will be very costly to these brands. We therefore have to question where will the future lines be drawn? Are these TV adverts really damaging? What certainly will be damaging is if over-inflated regulation makes it less and less appealing for advertisers to utilise broadcast media looking ahead. Whilst the UK regulation of TV can sometimes be perceived as too challenging by some advertisers and marketers as it stands the protection it gives to consumers is ultimately a price worth paying to ensure the advertising industry maintains its credibility for the viewing audience. This unique regulatory standard in the UK should be welcomed by all advertisers alike regardless of the platform they advertise on to create a genuine level ‘playing field’ for all, so long as the Regulators ensure their administration of all the broadcast media landscape is both fair and reasonable. For more information contact Pete Mills, Managing Director at SmartResponse Media: E: petemills@smartresponse.tv M: 07826 929 650 W: www.smartresponse.tv

The recently published Media Nations 2019 Report from OFCOM clearly illustrates the changing power structures within the UK broadcast industry and offers many insights into what the future holds and the challenges ahead for the TV advertising industry ‘as we knew it’. Recent seismic changes in broadcast consumption are driven by concurrent factors including new technology, new content generation, platform competition and generational consumption. These competing trends are set to continue dynamically in the years to come to radically change the way we, and future generations, consume television and video content. TV broadcast viewing still remains incredibly high with an average 3 hour and 12 minutes viewed daily by all consumers. This figure rises incrementally with age, with the ‘over 75’ watching on average five hours and 49 minutes per day on their televisions. There is an increasing gulf of viewing consumption behaviour for younger audiences as they have migrated towards video consumption via online services; with the much sought after 16-24 year old demographic watching on average 85 minutes per day on broadcast television, but an average of 73 minutes per day on YouTube. In recent years we have seen the explosion of Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD), driven primarily by Amazon Prime, Netflix, NOW TV and Disney Life. SVoD has reached 19.1 million subscriptions – a huge 24% increase in the last year alone – and now heavily eclipses the Pay TV Subscription services of Sky, Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk that now total a combined 14.3 million households. The battle lines for the future share of broadcast audiences is clearly now heavily based on the level of new content that can be produced by traditional broadcasters and new platform owners alike. As if the UK broadcast competitive landscape had not become hard enough in the fight for viewers, the introduction in Quarter Four 2019 of Apple TV+ and the new paid subscription joint venture between ITV and BBC, BritBox, and Disney+ will all be fighting for share. Four in ten viewers now report that online video services are now their preferred and main way of watching both television and video content. The advances in high-speed broadband – with over 80% of UK households having a connection – and the widespread distribution of Smart TVs, coupled with low cost SVoD packages, have led to a far wider choice of both media outlets and content. The continued fragmentation of audiences and viewership has put increasing pressure on all Media Owners and their advertising revenues looking ahead which have already seen reported decline during 2019 from Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs). It has been reported this week that the PSBs – ITV and Channel Four – are now lobbying OFCOM to extend the minutes per hour for advertising to presumably make up for this increasing shortfall in anticipated revenue looking ahead. It would appear that ultimately the quality and quantity of new content will be the primary driver in terms of ultimate success, whether the broadcaster relies on the newer subscription-based advertising light business model, or the traditional advert funded content model. Whilst this fierce commercial battle is fought amongst these relatively new and also established broadcast media monoliths, the Media Nations 2019 Report portrays television in the UK as a medium that in terms of both delivery options and variety of content remains great value for money and the ‘media of choice’ for the end consumer. Thus remaining the most important ‘player’ and arbiter in the ever-complex future world of broadcasting.

SmartResponse are pleased to announce today the launch of our new company website www.smartresponse.tv A deep felt thank you from us to all our Agency Clients, Retail Customers, Suppliers and Media Owners for all your support over the last four years since we launched SmartResponse back in 2015 as a specialist DRTV Advertising, TV Shopping and Retail agency – we very much appreciate it and are looking forward to working with you all in the future. For more information contact Pete Mills, Managing Director at SmartResponse Media: E: petemills@smartresponse.tv M: 07826 929 650 W: www.smartresponse.tv

Not a week appears to go by without a household name UK Retailer announcing a Creditors Voluntary Agreement (CVA), multiple store closures or in the most severe financial circumstances applying for administration/liquidation. It appears that virtually no established retail brand is immune to remedial measures to ensure commercial survival as the rapidly changing consumer landscape has caught large sections of the industry off guard, despite the warning signs and seismic shifts of consumer behaviour being in plain sight since the turn of the century. Transactional online websites started to enter into the mainstream of consumer usage just over 20 years ago in the UK, but many major Retailers were slow to take advantage of this new technical advance. Stalwarts including Marks & Spencer and Morrisons being prime examples of ‘late adopters’. They are now paying the severe price as they play catch up to the ever technically minded new generation of pure play online Retailers, and tech-savvy consumers who are migrating online in their droves, driven by value and convenience. As High Street trading continues to weaken in many parts of the country profitable bricks-and-mortar retailing becomes incrementally more challenging to attain for proprietors. Whilst some online retail sales can be argued to be incremental to the overall ‘take’ the reality is that the macroeconomic figures for the retail sector remain broadly the same – in short retail sales are still constant, but just derived from different sources. The decline of the traditional High Street is also exacerbated by oversupply of out-of-town retail space following the acquisitive ‘land grab’ of major retailers in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, leading to many Retailers occupying far too much physical space Vs. consumer geographic demand. As the recent spate of CVAs has shown, Landlords are being presented the Hobson’s Choice of either accepting large cuts in their long-term rental agreements, or their customers potentially going bust. The crux and challenge of the conundrum for retailers is to either invest and innovate, or to pay the price of standing still. There are many examples of successes in the sector during this epoch changing time, including Hotel Chocolat, JD Sports and most recently H&M, who have effectively and profitably embraced the challenge of multichannel retailing and continue to grow and expand. The alternatives, if Retailers are over dependent on bricks-and-mortar Vs. online sales, appear to be inevitably bleak. The latest figures from BRC Springboard Monitor convey a year on year 4.8% decline in footfall on the High Street. The future is commercially viable for the UK retail sector, but only if the physical space Vs. online sales conundrum is effectively tackled, and an efficient multichannel consumer offering is at the core of the retailer’s brand proposition and operations looking ahead.

SmartResponse Media announce that as of July 1st, 2019 they will be launching a new TV shopping station on the Sky Digital broadcast platform called SmartShop. SmartShop will broadcast from 6.00am-10.00pm daily on Sky Digital EPG channel number 686 and will feature the latest 30-minute infomercials from leading UK and international TV shopping specialist advertisers. Commenting on the launch of SmartShop, Pete Mills, Managing Director of SmartResponse Media, said: “We are very excited to be launching a new TV shopping channel in the UK market and are looking forward to making this a great success for all of our clients and advertisers looking ahead”. For more information contact Pete Mills, Managing Director at SmartResponse Media: E: petemills@smartresponse.tv M: 07826 929 650 W: www.smartresponse.tv

In a recent survey of major companies in the UK Amazon was unsurprisingly named as both the biggest threat and concurrent opportunity for their futures. The numbers are nothing short of staggering as Amazon can now claim to transact 49% of all online retail sales in the UK and continues to grow in both of its scale and multitude of services. This domineering scale, coupled with a generational change of digital consumption of products and services, only exacerbates the requirement for businesses to manage and engage with this fundamental change in the retail landscape. The monolithic and forever expanding Amazon retail online platform now creates a fundamental dilemma for businesses as their commercial choice is stark in relation to the binary trading options available. Option One – join Amazon and become either a wholesale supplier or vendor on their platform and increase retail sales dramatically, but ultimately forsake building their own controlled market share and guardianship of their own customer database. Option Two – try and compete on a ‘standalone’ basis and differentiate their consumer offer and customer proposition from Amazon and hope they can drive enough traffic to their own ‘owned’ transactional online website to mitigate this risk. There is, of course, a ‘middle ground’ that many brands maintain – operating their own transactional website, and also a large presence on Amazon too. By matching parity of pricing offers on both platforms they can concurrently thrive alongside one another. The challenge, however, continually remains that brands in their own operations must deliver to the precision ‘standard’ of Amazon in terms of timing, reliability and price. No easy task especially when Amazon continues to push their own ‘standards’ even higher – most recently offering delivery of selected items within two hours of ordering online. It would appear as Amazon continues its relentless march to grow their online global dominance that the options for brands to maintain their independence from the platform will become increasingly unviable as online shopping continues to grow in overall multi-channel terms exponentially year on year to 18.2% in 2018 (source: Office of National Statistics). The story for brands who have tried to ‘go it alone’ from Amazon – ToysRus being the most extreme recent example of failure – is increasingly a fight with an inevitable difficult ending for those concerned. The challenge for brands from Amazon is, of course, now not just online following their acquisition of Whole Foods Market in 2017 and many recent reports of them being potentially involved in bidding for other traditional bricks and mortar ‘household name’ retailers from the UK High Street, and the anticipated introduction of their own standalone physical retail outlets Amazon Go. The threat may be continually growing with Amazon, but for the nimble the opportunity continues to expand too…

SmartResponse, specialists in Direct Response TV and TV Shopping, are delighted to announce a new exclusive partnership formed with Direct Response Social Media buying specialists, Upbeat Agency. The SmartSocial partnership enables a cohesive approach to driving directly attributable return on investment from extended consumer touchpoints. The two agencies share a common commercial goal – to utilise cost effective media buying/planning, responsive creative and in-campaign optimisation, to generate directly attributable sales and profit for their clients. As a Facebook Preferred Supplier, Upbeat Agency have developed expert planning tools which drive huge response rates from Facebook and Instagram advertising. By utilising this social media buying expertise in conjunction with highly responsive DRTV advertising this combined coordinated marketing approach is set to be hugely profitable for their combined current, and future clients. For more information about SmartSocial please contact Pete Mills, Managing Director of SmartResponse, at petemills@smartresponse.tv

As the UK linear TV airtime market has declined in recent years, and online purchasing has become ubiquitous amongst the mass market, Direct Response Television (DRTV) advertising has experienced a major period of growth both in terms of scale and new creative formats. The growth of digital TV has led to there being a fundamental oversupply of TV channels with now over 650 populating the Sky Digital platform alone. Coupled with a change in the regulatory environment driven by the ‘Television Without Frontiers’ EU directive since the turn of the century this has led to a huge increase in DRTV and ‘teleshopping window’ airtime inventory in the UK at excellent value pricing. Prior to the advent of Sky Digital in 1998 DRTV advertisers were restricted to a very limited supply of DRTV airtime with a maximum length of creative of 120 seconds being available on any broadcast network. The costs of airtime were high and the ‘hit’ rate for any DRTV product or service was low. Infomercials had yet to hit the shores of the UK. From 1999-2002 alone the ‘Shopping’ EPG section of the Sky Digital platform grew from four to 38 dedicated TV shopping channels with the vast majority broadcasting pre-recorded 30-minute infomercials imported from the US. The new plethora of editorial TV channels introduced in the new digital dawn of TV in the early 2000’s concurrently embraced three hour ‘teleshopping windows’ carrying only infomercials as part of their daily schedules. DRTV was fast becoming a major force both in terms of size, scale, impact and awareness on the mass viewing audience. Over 200 channels in the UK including ITV, Channel Four and Five now broadcast infomercials daily. In more recent years the UK DRTV landscape has adapted again with the introduction of three minute ‘teleshopping windows’ across key TV broadcast networks running mini infomercials during key dayparts. This new three minute ‘teleshopping window’ airtime format typically trades at much better pricing than linear airtime – this material commercial factor coupled with the ability to include multiple ‘calls to action’ in the DRTV advertising creative has led to many clients now being able to generate net profit from directly attributed sales from DRTV campaigns alone. The DRTV advertising industry has previously been dominated by specialist DRTV brands including JML, High Street TV, Thane, BeachBody, Guthy-Renker, Shark and Timelife. In recent years many ‘household name’ brands are taking advantage of this new commercial opportunity and have now migrated significant media budgets to DRTV, as this new high growth media landscape continues to expand. Unlike many other media formats that are in perpetual decline (particularly press) DRTV airtime continues to grow and expand in the UK. In the last year 12-minute ‘teleshopping windows’ have seen significant growth and are now being carried daily on major mainstream TV channels. Further announcements are being planned by major channel owners for later in 2018 for yet more ‘teleshopping window’ airtime inventory to be opened up to the market. In these rapidly changing times when all companies need to be accountable with their marketing spends, the growing opportunity in DRTV is now open for all products and services to both generate creative direct profitable sales, whilst concurrently building their brand awareness. DRTV as a marketing format is flexible, inexpensive and a highly effective means to grow a profitable business for all brands.