If all this theory seems a little, well, theoretical to you, let's take a look at a real-world case study of a campaign in which brand building and direct response both played a vital role.

One of the nation's fastest-growing online universities was looking to generate qualified leads that they could ultimately convert to enrolled students. The marketing team at the school had done their share of market research and data mining, and they understood what type of suspects they were targeting at the first and second rungs of the ladder, in which brand building was a chief concern. What they needed was some way of promoting their brand to this particular audience, while simultaneously utilizing direct response tactics to elicit the "hand raising" that would push suspects onto the next rung of the ladder, in which they become prospects.

To that end, our company developed a rich media ad unit for the university-a flash-based webmercial in which we laid out the benefits of earning a degree through the university and positioned the school as the most convenient, flexible and reputable way to earn a degree online. The creative featured smart-looking, well-dressed people in their twenties and thirties who represented the type of success a prospective student could achieve if they too attended this leading university.

These were the brand elements of the ad unit. They were intended to garner the attention of those users from within the pool of suspects who might make good prospects. But getting them to actually raise their hands and signify their interest as prospects would require something else.

And that's where the direct response efforts came into play.

At the end of the message, as the voiceover winds down and encourages listeners with the call to action to "Apply today - and point your career upward," a form appears, asking them to submit some basic information in order to be contacted by an enrollment advisor and begin the application process. Or, if they don't want to sit through the whole message before completing the form, they can always click on the "Sign up now" button that appears on every screen throughout the piece.

So, was this webmercial designed as a brand building ad unit or a direct response piece? The answer, of course, is that it was both. It utilized brand-building elements to get a clear message across, and it capitalized on the momentum of that message by incorporating direct response techniques. By combining these two efforts into one campaign, it delivers the brand's core competencies and creates a favorable direct response environment.

How has the campaign performed? The early returns indicate that it is performing extremely well. The ad unit was run on a cost-per-lead basis, and so far it has generated over 5,000 leads by itself in a little less than three months.

Most importantly, the leads it has generated have been of extremely high quality, converting to all their most significant benchmarks at a higher rate than any of the other leads we've generated. Perhaps the ultimate judge of a lead's quality is the eventual cost-per-enrollment that the university pays on a batch of leads, and in this regard the numbers look very positive for our brand-direct campaign: it is saving them nearly $1,000 per enrollment over other forms of web-based lead generation campaigns.