Big Meeting Mug
Issue 14 | March 2010
Agency
M&C Saatchi, Sydney
Creative Team
Creative Director: Gavin McLeod, Associate Creative Director: Hamish Stewart, Copywriter: Hamish Grieve, Art Director: Kat Fleet, Designer: Jo Dickison
Production Team
Print Producer: David Coorey
Other Credits
Group Account Director: Mark Timmins, Client Service: Will Petersen, Clients: Susan Garrett, Belinda Bradford, Sonya Link
Date
October 2009
Background
Virtualisation or ‘cloud computing’ is the biggest thing in IT in the last 10 years. It allows large companies to run multiple operating systems on fewer servers, saving space and drastically reducing power and cooling costs.
Idea
They may not know the specifics, but given the hype surrounding virtualisation, CIOs are well aware of its benefits. The hard part is selling it to their Chief Financial Officer, and convincing him to finance the set-up costs – particularly in this economic climate.
Our solution: CIOs are technical people – they’re not necessarily sales people. The Optus assessment outlines in detail the benefits of moving to a virtual system, but they still need to sell it internally. So we gave them a little help – a cheat sheet for the meeting with the CFO, disguised as a mug.
Results
Already the Big Meeting Mug has enjoyed a healthy 4.8% response rate, and Optus sales teams are busy setting up appointments. Not bad when you consider that just one sale has the potential to deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars to the bottom line.
Our Thoughts
Most 3D mailings seem to me to be ghastly puns. We’ll cure your headaches – cue to send a bottle of Smarties pretending to be pills, etc. etc. So it’s a relief to see something get boxed up and sent out which the recipient might actually want to keep – in this case, A, because it’s funny but B, and more to the point, because it’s useful. Where do mugs go? I think there’s a planet out there inhabited only by muglike life-forms which have been abducted from Earth. This mug will spend at least a year on various desks around the organizations to which it has been sent. Total interaction time with the brand will amount to hours rather than minutes – before the mug is, in its turn, beamed up into another galaxy far, far from here.