A1 Flipchart

Background

The aim of the piece was to announce SEAT's arrival into the Fleet market and promote their full range of models. Most importantly it needed to position the SEAT brand to deliver maximum cut-through against competitors who had an established presence and considerably larger marketing budgets.

Idea

The campaign was developed to stand out on the desks of recipients and made fun of the irritating things people have to deal with at work, positioning the choice of a SEAT company car as the factor that makes it all worthwhile. The strapline was deliberately designed to be both provocative and entertaining: ‘Choose SEAT Fleet. Because people put up with enough crap at work’. The Contract Hire and Leasing sector was the most important for SEAT to break into. The top 50 key decision makers within this sector each received an over-sized A1 flipchart ridiculing elements of modern business speak and management techniques. Everything from tired jargon such as ‘touching base’ and ‘staying in the loop’ to the familiar pain of enforced corporate ‘Bonding’ sessions. Offsetting the annoyance and frustrations such nonsense can create was the positive and reassuring choice of a SEAT company car.

A great deal of care went into this piece in order to make something so mundane look authentic, even to the point of hand sticking crudely cut out cars to the paper. Even fine details such as ‘residual values’, emissions, reliability and running costs delivered in bar charts fall seamlessly into the flipchart session theme. A further 3,000 key account managers within the same companies were mailed an adapted A3 version of the same flipchart.

Results

The campaign has helped to deliver amazing results for the SEAT business – with the contribution of Fleet sales increasing by 25% year on year. This equates to an impressive 44% increase in actual sales of new cars since ‘Crap at work’ was introduced.

Target Audience

Fleet sales managers (key decision makers)

Size

50, plus 3,000 of the smaller A3 version of the mailing

Our Thoughts

Ideas like this one are all dependent on their execution. With careless copywriting or poor art direction this piece could have been an infuriatingly cumbersome mailing, yet the creatives manage not only to convince but charm. Despite bearing the heavy hand of the client towards the end, the piece is well observed (mug thieves beware!) and nicely constructed.