A Precision Valentine’s Day Message

Background

Kern calibrates and distributes some of the most accurate scales in the world. We believed there was a fantastic opportunity for our client to wish customers a happy Valentine’s Day, while also demonstrating the extraordinary precision of its products to its audience of scientists, engineers and pharmacists.

Idea

We emailed a charming Valentine’s video which proves it is possible to accurately measure the weight of an actual kiss using Kern technology.

As this is a branding exercise, we weren’t predicting any responses to the email. We would have been happy with a 25% click-through – already a high result due to the niche audience we were targeting.

Marketing in this sector is typically functional, bland and price focused. Despite their impressive capabilities, precision scales have become scientific commodities and there is very little to differentiate suppliers of such technology. Certainly a Valentine’s message in this sector would be rare, let alone one that uses charm and humour to demonstrate the product.

This Valentine’s message breaks these industry conventions. It’s an idea that appeals to the scientific minds of our audience. And it presents Kern as an innovative company that’s just as obsessed with precision as its customers.

Results

95% open rate. 60% click-through rate. 50% response rate from current customers. As a branding message it is difficult to measure the full value of the video. But this is part of a larger campaign that has resulted in a 30% increase in revenue since the start of 2009.

Our Thoughts

One of the frequent mistakes of our business is to make assumptions about our target audiences. Because I run my own company I often get mailings written in a slightly stiff and pompous manner, as if that’s the language I’m likely to understand best. Why can’t businessmen have a sense of humour?

Here, Wunderman could easily have decided that their target audience of boffins would all be dry old sticks and they’d have come up with an idea that was worthily scientific and probably dull. But by embarking on the premise that scientists are, for the most part, normal human beings, they have given themselves the room in which to be interesting and witty with the numbers to prove that charm and wit work.

This is a follow-up to the brilliant integrated campaign we featured in Directory 14.