Administrator of pension savings / Letter Stories

Background

Every March, Collectum sent out red envelopes to one and a half million Swedes. The envelope contained information on how they could maximize their personal pensions.

Though the letter is very important, many recipients didn’t even open the envelope.

The challenge was to get more people to read the letter from Collectum. 

Idea

The creative idea was to set out to prove that a single letter can change a person’s life.

Telling stories is strong. Telling real, dramatic, and emotionally touching stories is even stronger.

The agency found real stories about how a single letter had changed lives and told these stories in places where people have the time to read: when travelling.

The media comprised posters at main subway stations, streamers inside subway cars and signs inside buses plus print ads and internet banners.

Readers were encouraged to open the red envelope because even if it didn’t change their lives, it could change their pensions.

Results

30 percent more people opened and read the contents of the red envelope than in 2011 .

Our Thoughts

We have included this campaign in Directory 25 as an inspiration for any of our readers who are in the Post, paper or envelope business. We have watched as Direct Mail has taken a pounding over the last ten years. Against digital media, it looks difficult and expensive.

Maybe there’s an insight here that can be applied more widely. Letters do affect lives. One man’s junk is another man’s life-changing inspiration.

As an industry much misunderstood by Joe Public, Direct Mail needs to be engaging its sceptics with stories that have real humanity rather than with numbers about response rates or CO2 emissions or whatever.

Just a thought.