Speed Up/Slow Down
Issue 13 | December 2009
Agency
Wunderman, London
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: David Harris, Creative Director: James Nester, Chris Lawson: Creative Head
Production Team
Steve Aston: Production Manager
Other Credits
Emma Sherrard: Account Director, Angela Vitelli: Account Manager
Date
September 2009
Background
The UK business market already knows about the famous FedEx overnight service. So to win new customers, the strategy was also to promote the more affordable four-day option. As businesses often have postal contracts, the idea needed to have long ‘desk-life’ and engage multiple decision makers.
Idea
In the postroom, some days everything is urgent. Some days it’s not. To dramatise this insight as well as the fast/slow FedEx service offering, dispatch managers and
office managers were sent a box containing a choice of hot drinks: they could have caffeine-packed coffee or calming camomile tea. Every sachet acted as a mini-advert in its own right promoting the appropriate service.
Results
The prospects targeted had a high potential lifetime value so it was pleasing that this low-volume campaign generated a 7% response rate of whom 50% were converted into new customers. A lifetime-value model calculates that the ROI of the campaign was around 1,275%.
Our Thoughts
Caitlin Ryan makes the point on p.7 that there are fashions in DM. And the dimensional mailer seems to be very out of fashion at the moment, partly because
of issues to do with sustainability and partly anything 3D looks like extravagance in recession. So here’s to the agency and the client who bucked the trend and spent a bit of money on being pleasant to their target audience. It’s a nice thing to do, to send someone his or her elevenses. And while it may have been nice it was no surprise that it led to champagne results.