Electronic Retailer - January 2012 - 24

SENSATIONAL MARKETING

had a winning advantage.” In October 2008, Intelligent Beauty introduced SENSA to the marketplace.

Online Marketing Leads the Way
The SENSA direct response campaign began with a comprehensive online marketing strategy. As Goldenberg explains, “We always start our direct response advertising campaigns on the internet, which is pretty different from what the rest of the industry is doing. We find that the internet really allows us to very rapidly test all the variables of an advertising campaign – from the core-marketing message, to the price point, to the packaging. And you can do that very quickly and effectively online. So, that’s where we started with the SENSA campaign.” To ensure complete control over the creative vision of the marketing, as well as the overall brand development, all of SENSA’s online marketing is done inhouse. Says Goldenberg, “We are our own agency and buy media directly from all the major publishers. We’ve also built our own technology platform that allows us to very rapidly test all the variables critical to our campaign, and we can test those simultaneously through multi-variable testing.” Today, the SENSA team focuses primarily on advertising with the major portals, such as Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, as well as social media – primarily with Facebook. Online video serves an important role in their online marketing. “About three years ago, we placed a major bet on video by creating our own full video production company because with online video, you must be able to create content costeffectively and very quickly,” Goldenberg notes. “We looked at it and said, ‘If we have to outsource to an outside production company, we’re never going to be able to utilize video the way we want to with social media and on our websites, where we’re testing every single day.’ ”

DRTV Comes into Focus
The next step was to introduce SENSA to television via DRTV. “We actually spent almost a full year fine-tuning the messaging and really building our initial brand 24

awareness on the internet before going to television,” notes Goldenberg. Thus, the online channel served as a testing ground that later paved the way for their DRTV efforts. “Because we test first on the internet, we can very cost-effectively see the results and understand our marketing message, thereby taking the risk out of the equation when we go to television. So we can have a very high degree of confidence before we ever spend our first media dollar,” he affirms. Goldenberg adds that marketers are lucky if they can test five or six versions of a show in a year; whereas with the internet, one can actually test thousands of iterations of creative and websites over that same period of time. The SENSA DRTV campaign began with long-form and was produced inhouse. Ressler admits one of the overarching challenges during the creative development of the show was claims substantiation. “We were fortunate enough to have very solid research from Dr. Hirsch, and so we were sure to stay within our clinical studies in making claims and not going overboard with testimonials,” he explains. “We felt that as long as we stuck to the clinical research that we had substantiated, we’d be giving the endconsumer a great value.” The infomercial proved successful and continues to maintain a steady position in the Top 25 infomercials in the IMS rankings. With short-form, Goldenberg says the 30-second format has been very effective. “We have a 30-second TV advertising campaign that’s much more brand-centric and focused on primetime advertising that we find actually performs very well for us on a direct-response basis,” he explains. To date, SENSA embodies a multichannel marketing strategy that also includes home shopping, radio and print advertising. Goldenberg contends, “One other key element that makes us different is the fact that we do everything in-house. I think if you’re a company that’s outsourcing your internet, infomercial production, radio and print campaigns, it can be challenging to keep them all on the same page. We do it all ourselves so that all the marketing remains cohesive.”

Exploring Retail and Mobile
As consumer demand for the weightloss product continues to surge, more and more retailers are knocking at Intelligent Beauty’s door. However, Ressler says there’s no rush to put SENSA on every retailer shelf. “We’re just being very cautious and strategic in our thinking,” he notes. One retailer that’s currently enjoying SENSA’s popularity is GNC. In fact, in just a year and a half, SENSA has become one of its most successful overall products, and not just in the weight-loss category. What’s more, SENSA launched in Costco wholesale stores throughout the U.S. in late 2011. It’s clear that U.S. sales are flourishing, but what about globally? Ressler says global expansion is a major initiative for SENSA in 2012-2013. The company currently has a partnership with a German-based pharmaceutical company to distribute the product internationally. Mobi le is anot her channel t hat Goldenberg and his team plan to integrate into their overall marketing strategy. He explains, “It’s a channel that we’re aggressively testing. Mobile is definitely in the future; it’s where the internet is going as a whole.” In fact, the company is allocating part of its budget to testing its marketing on mobile. “It’s still sort of an evolving marketplace, where the app formats are still being finalized,” he adds. “I think in the next two to three years, mobile users are literally going to overtake desktop users. So, it’s an area where we need to go as a company very quickly.”

Staying the Course
What future plans lay on the horizon for Intelligent Beauty Inc. and SENSA? As Goldenberg puts it, “At the moment, we have three great companies with great teams who are passionate about what they’re building, and we think each one of those companies has the potential to be a billion-dollar company. I think for the foreseeable future, we’re really going to focus on the companies that we’re building. But because Don and I are entrepreneurs at heart, you can never tell for sure what the future will hold.”

electronicRETAILER | January 2012

Electronic Retailer - January 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Electronic Retailer - January 2012