Direkt von der Quelle
Issue 22 | March 2012
Agency
Serviceplan Munich
Creative Team
Executive Creative Directors: Matthias Harbeck, Ekki Frenkler; Creative Directors: Oliver Palmer, Alexander Rehm; Art Directors: Therese Stüssel, Felipe Cury; Copywriters: Martin Magnet, Augusto Moreno dos Anjos
Other Credits
Account Supervisor: Markus Koch
Date
2011
Background
A bit like The Economist crossed with The New Statesman, Cicero is a political magazine in Germany.
They wanted to attract more advertising by bringing to life their core proposition “Politics, straight from the source” to an audience of media buyers and opinion-formers in the media world.
Idea
The creative idea was to carve miniature masterpieces into the lead tips of pencils, portraits of important politicians.
These sculptures were handed to front-line politicians themselves and mailed to key media figures in premium boxes.
The uniqueness and the quality of the mailing reinforced the values of the publication to its key target group as well as being the sort of mailing no-one would want to throw away. These were, after all, remarkable little works of art the recipients would want to keep on their desks, where they would provide a constant reminder of the magazine.
Results
Seven key media-buyers were mailed pencils and five responded personally to the magazine’s editor.
In hard facts, enquiries about buying space in the magazine increased 24% and sales of actual advertising space increased 17% as well as boosting both awareness and brand image.
Each pencil cost €300 to carve and €200 to package and send leading to an increase in advertising revenues of €56,695 per pencil per issue.
Our Thoughts
You don’t need to broadcast a message to significantly advance your business, you don’t need a target group of thousands, tens of thousands or more. You can make good money by just identifying seven people and talking to them. That’s the beauty of mail as a medium. The only problem is, it requires you to think first. Think about who you are talking to, what you want to say to them and, crucially, why the heck they should be remotely interested in what you have to say. Lastly, you have to think about how you want them to respond.
In this case, the desired response was for the recipient to be amazed, and to call out to anyone nearby, “Look at this! Isn’t it amazing! My God, it really looks like Sarko!”
But, of course, thinking is hard. Much easier to do what everyone else is doing. Run an ad in the trade press, for instance, which no-one will notice.