6 posts tagged “marketing campaigns and case studies”
As every creative will agree, most of our best ideas remain as just that – ideas.
Cracking work, bang on brand, exciting, pushing boundaries, disruptive, intelligent, fascinating, thought-provoking, action-inducing but never get anywhere past the ‘no’ brigade. It never ceases to amaze me how many hurdles you have to jump through to produce work, let alone good work.
And how the hell does anything truly great get through? I believe it really only comes out of agencies who aren’t afraid to push back. And how many of those are there in this current climate?
See what you think to this. I’d be really interested in your thoughts. Submitted to both Shelter then St Mungo’s, I’ve had rejections from both even though it’s the offer of free work that’s cheap as chips to produce.
Strategy
Winter is coming. Life on the streets gets tougher and more dangerous. Whether it’s the elements that get you or the unsavoury characters who come out after dark, it becomes ever more difficult to survive out there. The trouble is few everyday people see where some have to spend the night because they’re generally gone by the morning. So, unless people are made aware of the hardship that some have to deal with night after night, they pass by oblivious.
Creative
A simple printed A3 or A2 sheet designed to look like a Police sign dramatically demonstrates that someone could have died there the previous night. The call to action is to donate to Shelter and help give a home to those who really need it. These can be stuck up wherever homeless people sleep rough. Very cheap to produce (perhaps just the price of a colour photocopy), they would be a very cost effective way to cover any city by the charity’s volunteers.
I’m going to go through my portfolio of gems that never were and post a few more here. Am I mad? Am I frustrated? Not any more. I’m really genuinely happy these days. I just fancy airing good thinking that passed by unnoticed, for whatever reason. Then again, perhaps it is all crap after all!
This article was written by Chris Catchpole. Go check out his impressive direct marketing portfolio
I love my direct mail; I look forward to reviewing every piece of the mail in my mail box. The best part of direct mail marketing is not how creative the package is, nor how good and responsive the list is, nor how strong the offer or how compelling the story about the kit is to me.
What is really exciting about direct mail marketing are the disaster stories about the pieces of mail you never see in your mailbox, move closer, this could happen to you at any time. Some of the best direct mail pieces you will never see. Here is just one more mailing kit you won’t see in your mailbox.
In this article James E. Sullivan of Optic Nerve Direct Mail Marketing in San Francisco shares a few direct mail horror stories with you.
DIRECT MAIL HORROR STORIES…
There are a lot of disaster stories out there, some are just plain sad, and some, didn’t even make the mailstream. One such sad story began with the creatives and the clients decided that they wanted to have a singing microchip sing a popular song about their product. The song selected was very current, easy to remember as well as short and sassy.
The chip was inserted into a finely designed box, with a small product sample and wrapped securely with a pleasing to the eyes, box wrapper. The 50,000 pieces were all hand inserted, properly sorted and matched up with a personalized letter, wrapped and again personalized, stamped and ready to mail. Leaving the mailing house with all of those perfectly wrapped packages, the truck driver entered the local USPS loading dock, unfortunately the truck driver was having trouble entering the bay perfectly, in frustration, he jammed the truck into reverse gear and slammed into the rear of the loading dock with a resounding thud….what happened next was heartbreaking melody.
Most, if not all of the micro chips accidentally got activated by the sudden jarring of the truck, singing all of the words of the pre-programmed song in their entire 50,000 pieces chorus. The orchestra did not stop, all of them kept repeating their songs, all at different times and in different segments of that popular song, over and over again. The back door of the truck was not even allowed to open, the Postmaster at the dock would not allow the truck to discharge its cargo until the singing stopped completely.
Undaunted, the truck driver informed the Postmaster that after a few minutes of settling down to normal and balanced levels, the singing would all stop and a silent truck would prevail. The bellowing of the 50,000 voices was not to be silenced, even after a brief waiting time, alas, silence was not going to happen. The Postmaster kindly asked the truck drive to take his melodic shipment back to the mailing house. As you can imagine, neither the production manager, nor the creative director, or even worse, the client, were amused. The microchips continued singing their hapless song for about two days, before their chip life died. With that, the mailing died as well.
All 50,000 pieces were dead, none could be saved, the entire mailing piece was lost, hundreds of thousand of dollars wasted on a singing chips. What did we all learn from this… maybe having your mail talk back to you is not a good idea.
Get James E. Sullivans “Six things to consider when establishing a direct mail campaign”
James E. Sullivan, a NorCal BMA member, is the Project Manager of Optic Nerve Direct Marketing, a direct mail consultancy and advertising agency. Check out their website for additional useful resources, including a “75 Point Checklist” for direct mail.
Direct mail…it’s not like any other marketing medium. Have trouble with a TV ad you’ve placed?or a magazine placement? “Make goods” are available.
But in direct mail, disasters happen just days before the drop-dead mail dates. And then, it’s too late. All is lost. With direct mail, disaster can lurk in a million different locations, and often, where least expected. So take heed of the horror stories I’m about to share with you.
In this article James E. Sullivan of Optic Nerve Direct Mail Marketing in San Francisco shares a few direct mail horror stories with you.
Direct mail horror story 1
One production manager had the same printer print all the components of his mail package at the same time: the outer envelope, the reply envelope, the generic letter, the lift note, and the 4-color brochures. He also decided to have all those materials shipped to the mail shop all at once. That sounded like a good idea. The mail shop would get all the required materials at the same time and then the job would be ready to mail after the sample package was approved. What could be more efficient?
Well, this was the hinterlands of Pennsylvania, In the dead of winter, So getting from point A to point B wasn’t something to take for granted. The semi truck transporting all of those beautiful envelopes, letters, lift notes and 4-color brochures, slid on the ice-covered roadway, turned over, rolled down an embankment and then burst into flames. The fire burned for FOUR hours. Guess why? Yep, all that volatile fresh ink. Luckily, the driver of the truck was OK. But, given that every single mailer was inside that truck, the whole campaign was sunk. All that money spent and nothing to show for it. Needless to say, the mailing didn’t go out the day it was promised. The State Troopers called the resulting firestorm, “the Perfect Barbecue”. Gotta love “COP HUMOR”.
Direct mail horror story 2
A major telecommunications company wanted to advertise and promote its prestigious data recovery capabilities. Its direct mail agency came up with the following concept: The package would be a large, shrink-wrapped plastic pill bottle with a brochure/letter inside, with the theme “First Aid for Your Data Network.” The local post office approved the design for mailing but the client decided it wanted to mail from a different post office, and the actual mailing post office was not contacted to look at and approve the design of the mailer.
This was just after the 9/11 attacks, and the “anthrax through the mail” scare was a major concern. So when all 50,000 of the bottles showed up at the client’s chosen post office, all 50,000 were promptly rejected. So they all needed to be shipped to the post office that approved the mailing in the first place. But that wasn’t the worst thing that happened. Not even close.
The worst came after all the bottles reached their recipients. The client received over 70 phone calls from prospects and customers expressing outrage over receiving such a “scary” package.
In conclusion, even the best of direct mail talents are sometimes in awe of the ingenuity of “Murphy’s Law” creeping in and spoiling your mailings. Regardless, if you plan on doing direct mail marketing, go with an experienced professional or agency that has learned and experienced these types of disasters so you will be not the client that we can all learn from these types of direct mail marketing mistakes.
Get James E. Sullivans “Six things to consider when establishing a direct mail campaign”
James E. Sullivan, a NorCal BMA member, is the Project Manager of Optic Nerve Direct Marketing, a direct mail consultancy and advertising agency. Check out their website for additional useful resources, including a “75 Point Checklist” for direct mail.
Often companies spend enormous ressources designing a (new) corporate logo, product logo or campaign logo designed.
According to Wikipedia, a logo’s design is for immediate recognition, inspiring trust, admiration, loyalty and an implied superiority. The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand, or economic or academic entity, and its shapes, colors, fonts, and images usually are different from others in a similar market. Logos are also used to identify organizations and other non-commercial entities.
Here are some logos that definately makes YOU think about something other than what was intended (I am sure)
I think the images speak for themselves
Clinica Dental, now what to expect? Perhaps the CMO should consider a new logo design (or perhaps not :- )
The Kunaware Pharmacy might want to consider designing the “K” differently.
The worst of the worst. Arlington Pediatric Center.
It’s simply a disgrace, and the CMO should immediately take steps to implement a new logo design. Perhaps using the letters APC might be the safest bet.
An unfortunate placement, or is it?
Difficult to avoid the situation in the Nestle outdoor add below. I think this picture might be staged, don’t you?
If you know of other examples, please do let me know
Geek Squad is a hugely popular PC repair (etc) service. The company developed their own unique culture, which has been very successful. Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens shares the story at the London Marketing Society.
In the summer of 2006, Mark Kern, Bill Petras, and Taewon Yun met with advisor Jeff Loomans to discuss how to grow the Red 5 family. They all knew that recruiting (people) in the game industry was crazy. Still, the three Red 5ers were determined to hire the best and brightest minds in the industry, while communicating just how cool it is to work at Red 5 Studios.
The result is mind-blowing and a lesson in how to focus relentlessly on the right target group with the right message.
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Story below can also be found with images at the Red 5 Studios homepage
Laying the Foundation The more the group thought about it, they knew that just more of the same wasn’t going to work. Form emails and phone calls were overdone, passé: the gogo boots of the recruiting industry. They needed something that would be uniquely Red 5, something that would immediately grab a prospective applicant’s imagination.
Mark remembered that Steve Jobs took a uniquely active role when he started running Pixar. Jobs personally called the top fifty animators in the world, and extended an invitation to come and work for his new company. It’s that kind of rapport that the team most wanted to replicate, but they still needed a way to cut through the hype of traditional recruiting campaigns. So it was decided that instead of recruiting openly, the company would focus on personally meeting one hundred of the top people in the game industry. Red 5 would extend a singular, unique invitation to each of those one hundred people, and let them know that they were part of an event that happens once in a lifetime.
The project began by drafting a list of Red 5’s dream team, people whose work the studio admired. After the list was compiled, Red 5 researched each individual: they wanted to learn more about the type of work they liked doing, the game titles they had worked on, and what kept them inspired once they clocked off for the day. There was a lot of online research, as the studio read blogs posts, played games, crawled through forum posts, even Amazon wish lists—all in order to get to know each person a little better.
Eventually, the list of a hundred names was complete. It was time to start work on the invitation, like the kind people get to attend the Academy Awards. But, you know, without the swag bag. Or Joan
Rivers.
It Takes a Village
With the list in hand, Red 5 started thinking about the best way to grab each recipient’s attention, to show them that they were being asked to be part of something unique, something exciting. Over the next few months, Red 5 interviewed countless studios until settling on Pool, a San Francisco-based design firm. Pool just got Red 5, and had some really fantastic ideas on how to turn Red 5’s work into a memorable campaign.
After testing a few versions, the idea quickly evolved from a mailing piece into a multimedia event. The packaging took on a more important role that would reveal a story as the recipient stripped away each layer. And once the recipient got to the center of the packaging, they’d find a brand new stamp-sized iPod Shuffle, which hadn’t yet been released in the US.
Custom-engraved with each recipient’s name and a unique code, each iPod was more than a special gift: it was the key to accessing the Red 5 website, where they could learn more about the company, as well as the job that Red 5 had cherry-picked them for.
While Pool continued work on the print design, Red 5 hired Airbag Industries to design a website that would match the ass-kickery of the invitation. The game geeks-cum-Photoshop freaks at Airbag had found a dream client in Red 5 Studios, and had a great time wrapping a compelling design around Red 5’s concept artwork and, well, storied staff bios.
Under the hood, Airbag created a souped-up Ruby on Rails content management
system that allowed Red 5 to manage all aspects of the site, from tracking new users to updating homepage copy. The CMS also presented a custom homepage to each prospective hire after they logged in, welcoming them to this one-of-a-kind opportunity. Users could also read individual team bios, see who else had joined the Red 5 family, and send website login codes to their friends so they could learn more
about the company and their unique job opportunities.
Of course, Red 5’s employees were intimately involved in every step of the process: they helped test the campaign, continued researching invitees, wrote personalized greetings, wrote website copy, and recorded the personalized audio greetings for each iPod. And throughout the entire process, the team worked day (and sometimes night) to meet major milestones.
After a few months of work, the campaign was finally ready to ship: the site was up and running, and the iPods were wrapped oh-so-beautifully. From a brainstorming session to a beautifully designed campaign that spanned on- and off-line media, the recruiting project was finally ready to be unleashed upon one hundred very lucky folks.
But it would all be for naught unless the packages actually got to the intended recipient. Kind of a key step, that.
Off the Grid
When it came to shipping, the best approach was to send the invitations to the recipients’ places of work, as those addresses were easiest to find with a little online search. But Red 5 was enticing folks away from competing companies, and didn’t want prying corporate mail rooms to intercept their carefully designed invitations. After months of work,having a mail clerk net himself a free iPod Shuffle wasn’t the most
appealing idea.
To add an extra layer of sneaky, the print invitation was specifically designed to fit inside plain FedEx boxes, which had a higher chance of slipping by the mail monitors. Furthermore, the shipping company could help ensure that the packages arrived to everyone nearly on the same day.
Whirlwind: Reaped
And it worked better than anyone could have predicted. The response rate was overwhelming. Red 5 had a nearly 100% response rate on their campaign; by comparison, most direct mail initiatives are considered “successful” if they hear back from two percent of their recipients. Furthermore, Red 5 got supremely viral: almost every person used the website to send invitations to their friends, spreading the word even more.
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Since the campaign, the Red 5 offices have been busier than ever: the team in Orange County has been meeting new friends and showing them around the corporate offices. And the campaign has gotten ridiculous amounts of buzz, with many saying that Red 5 really raised the bar to new levels in recruiting, while making an impact on the game industry itself.
