Long Letter
Issue 13 | December 2009
Agency
DraftFCB New Zealand
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: James Mok, Creative Director: Tony Clewett, Copywriter: Jane Jamieson, Art Director: Leisa Wall
Production Team
Production Manager: Eric Thompson
Other Credits
One to One Strategist: Melissa Forrest, Account Director: Kate Heatley, Account Manager: Emily Bellringer
Date
29 September 2009
Background
Media space is a battlefield in New Zealand. With client budgets slashed and every TV network, radio station and print publication shouting about cut-price media placement deals, the Herald on Sunday newspaper needed to remind media agents that it was an award-winning publication worthy of consideration. The campaign’s success would be measured in the increased number of full-page bookings taken for October 2009.
Idea
Research had uncovered an impressive statistic – the average reader spends an HOUR reading the Herald on Sunday. So the agency designed a 34-page letter to media buyers containing over 13,000 words, which would take exactly an hour to read.
Of course, no-one really expected them to read the whole thing but the hope was that the extremely thick letter would give recipients an unforgettable demonstration of the benefit of buying space in the paper.
Results
The Herald on Sunday received 70 full-page ad bookings for the month of October, representing an increase of over 79% on the same month in 2008, and a ROI of 15:1. In fact, this has been their most successful direct marketing campaign to date. Maybe people DO read long copy after all!
Our Thoughts
If you read Jim Aitchison’s excellent book ‘Cutting Edge Advertising’, he asks copywriters when they set out to write an ad., ‘Do you want to write a letter or a postcard?’. Well, this letter is a postcard. Even if it ios 34 pages long. You get the idea in the first couple of seconds in the first couple of sentences and reading on is not actually necessary, nor even expected. It’s the physical qualities of the letter (thick) allied to the statistic in the headline that gives the idea its weight.
Nice one.