Pioneering Achievements
Hawthorne is credited with a number of DRTV industry firsts. He was the first advocate of major brand advertisers incorporating long form TV advertising in their media mix. He wrote the industry's most cited full-length textbook. He produced or managed the first infomercial for a Fortune 500 company (Time-Life), for a major credit card company (Discover Card), and a major health insurance company (Blue Cross). He also created the first infomercial campaign for driving retail sales for an established brand (Braun). He oversaw development of the first software program, TimeTrackTM, dedicated to analyzing sales and viewership performance of purchased media time slots. He introduced the Media Efficiency Ratio (MER) key performance indicator, now a standard industry metric. He signed the first long-term bulk media contract with a national cable network, Discovery Channel (in 1985) for the airing of DRTV commercials, published the first newsletter devoted to DRTV (The 1-800 Report), and introduced the “three calls-to-action” formula—a staple in DRTV. He was the first to produce a 30-minute “documercial” (using a documentary format to sell products), and the first to introduce a “promomercial” (a 30-minute program designed to promote a different television program—-in this case, NBC’s Jag).
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