Burning for business
Self-promotion
Issue 23 | May 2012
Agency
JWT Group Germany
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer: Till Hohmann; Head of Art: Paul Watmough; Creative Technologist: Nick Marshall; Art Director: Regina Groffy; Designer/Typographer: Juarez Rodrigues; Designer: Ainara Del Valle Perez-Solero; Copywriter: Victor Barrenechea, Michael Muck; Digital Designer: Lars Kopp
Production Team
Production Manager: Martin Berger; Finaliser: Sandra Schreier; Re-toucher: Marco Perdigones; Video Editor: Albert Volta; Video DOP: Lennart Eggers
Other Credits
CEO: Martin Wider; Bronze Founder – Bildgiesserei Wittkamp: Michael Wittkamp; Printing and Assembly – Contrast Druck: Thilo Westphal
Date
March 2012
Background
The advertising market in Germany is dominated by local independent agencies who have only recently cottoned on to the importance of shopper marketing.
The challenge was to get clients to realise that JWT has been doing retail communications for years and is more creative than they think.
Idea
The agency took its Gold Lions and its recent Gold Effie and melted them down, turning the metal into shopping-cart coins. They mailed the coins to prospective clients telling the two stories – one, of the making of the coin, which was supported by a website with a film of the melt-down, and, two, of the coin itself and the value it represents.
Results
In the first mailing of 50 coins, there was a 70% response via telephone calls and e-mails. Six credentials presentations have taken place and four projects briefed. The second mailing will go out later in the year.
Our Thoughts
It is almost axiomatic these days that there is a conflict between producing effective work and award-winning work. It’s not true, of course, but is enough that many clients believe it to be true. So this mailing from JWT Germany is both insightful and brave. Brave because they make themselves vulnerable to mockery from their ‘more creative’ competition (“They could only make 100 coins. If we melted all our awards, we’d have thousands…”) and because it could alarm their own creative people. Awards, for them, do pave the way to pay-rises and/or the next job.