OnDemand Meats
Issue 17 | December 2010
Agency
Aim Proximity Auckland
Creative Team
Creative Director: Michael Barnfield; Creative Director Digital: Terry Williams-Wilcox; Copywriter: Mike Kelly; Art Director: Matt Hampton; Interactive Art Director: Theunis Groenewald; Developer:Paul Sanderson
Production Team
Producer: Serena Fountain-Jones; Digital Producer: Paul Shannon
Other Credits
Account Director: Victoria Pether; Account Director: Paula Castle; Account Executive: Matt Frost; Marketing Manager: Vanessa Winley
Date
September 2010
Background
The TVNZ Ondemand advertising platform was misunderstood by agencies in New Zealand. Media buyers would sometimes allocate leftover budget to the channel and creatives knew that you could use it to screen your TVC’s during the online programming, and that was about it.
Because TVNZ Ondemand actually gives advertisers the ability to blend video and interactive digital content together, they wanted to educate the industry about the amazing ways they could make great creative even better.
Idea
To get the New Zealand advertising industry excited about TVNZ Ondemand and make it a first choice media solution rather than an afterthought, the idea was to target one of the toughest target audiences in the world to impress – the nation’s creative directors.
Creating a direct mail piece they would never have seen the like of before and simply could not ignore, the agency packed a 60kg hindquarter of Angus beef into a crate and shipped it to their office. The delivery came from Ondemand Meats, a fictitious butchery, who told the recipients they would be back later to take it away and carve it up for them. To discover what was about to unfold, the CDs could go to the Ondemand Meats website and watch a skilled butcher carve a beast into its choice cuts. One by one, these instructional videos explained the many features of TVNZ Ondemand.
The carcass was duly removed and returned as neatly wrapped steaks for the creative department. These parcels directed the teams to the website to learn about TVNZ Ondemand and, in a competition to win a Canon camera, enter ideas to test the creative potential of TVNZOndemand.
Results
16 of the country’s top creative directors were mailed and within a few days the campaign website had received 506 unique visitors, each averaging five minutes per visit.
The hard-to-please target audience spread news of the campaign through Facebook, Twitter and their personal blogs, thus widening interest in TVNZOndemand beyond just media buyers.
Our Thoughts
Rory Sutherland once noted that the best direct mail is portable. You can put it in your pocket, carry it around with you, take it places. In this extravagantly theatrical idea, while it was the creative directors who would have been reeling with shock at being sent a large piece of cow, it was all the creatives who got to take home a steak supper. I bet there was much noise in the 16 agencies when the deliveries were made. There seems to have been a fair bit of online banter as well. Another example, then, of mail as social media.