New Year’s Resolution
Issue 11 | July 2009
Agency
Draft FCB
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Mark Fiddes, Creative Director: Graham Pugh, Copywriter: Sam Cunningham, Art Director: Marisa Davies
Production Team
Production Manager: John Hemmings, Digital producer: Stephanie Rousset
Other Credits
Account Directors: Sarah Ashworth, Ed Birth, Account Manager: Juliane Beggs, Planner: Michael Lean
Date
29th January 2009
Background
Many people start the New Year with good intentions to get their lives sorted out; bring some meaning to them; quit the job and begin again. But all too often the New Year’s resolution has been forgotten by the end of January as a result of the pressure at work and the need to just keep soldiering on.
The target audience had already expressed an interest in teaching. The mailing was an encouragement to them to take the final step and apply.
Idea
The task was both to get attendance at Train to Teach events, where potential recruits could meet practising teachers and talk to them about their careers, as well as sell the benefits and rewards of teaching.
In early February, the target market found an intriguing little box on their doormat marked ‘Fragile. Open with care’. The box contained a light-activated sound chip, which, upon opening, made the sound of smashing glass. The inner box then transpired to be ‘upside down’ and because the chip was also movement activated, the smashing noises continued. The headline of the leaflet read, ‘By this time of year, most resolutions have been broken. Do something meaningful in 2009. Turn your talent to teaching’. It was provocative, original and impossible to ignore.
Results
Weekly applications from target audience are up +85.6% compared to +57.8% in 2008.
Attendance at Train to Teach events up 51%
Overall teacher recruitment campaign now at 94% increase year on year
Email – open rate +49.29% from 2008 and +3.86% in unique clicks to main CTAs. Follow-up email blast to non-responders from first blast drove additional 593 clicks, an uplift of 18.85%.
Our Thoughts
The creativity of this piece is in the timing of ithe mailing. The Christmas break is a time for reflection and research indicated that, for many, it’s a time when they review their lives. So, armed with the insight that by the end of January all those good intentions will have faded away, this was a brief the creatives could only mess up. But they didn’t. The sound-effects of smashing glass would have been intriguing and I’m sure the reveal within would have prompted one of those slightly uncomfortable moments of self-awareness. To some, as evidenced by the response figures, this would have felt incredibly personal as well as pertinent.