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Chocolate Direct Mail
In an effort to address the UK's declining direct mail volumes, Royal Mail hired Proximity London to create a sensory-based direct mail campaign. The agency used a chocolate mailing, which was contained in a heat-sensitive cover and was sent to 6,000 people at marketing and creative agencies in the UK to show how use of sensory mail could improve response rates on direct campaigns. A paper copy accompanied the chocolate letter in case recipients ate it.
The letter was designed to encourage the target audience to smell, touch and taste it, and explains the principle of engaging the senses to create more emotive connections with customers.
The campaign clearly emphasised direct mail's ability to appeal to the senses. Royal Mail claims that the campaign had a financial return six times greater than the original investment and the campaign recently won an Echo Award in Las Vegas.
A study by Brand Sense, a sensory branding consultancy, found consumers made decisions to buy particular products based on their ability to engage "sensory signals". Royal Mail said the chocolate mailing allowed direct marketers to engage with "more than three of their recipient's senses and improve campaign response rates for businesses".
While I've seen plenty of novel and innovative campaigns over the years, this is the first "unhealthy" direct mail piece that I've come across!
Posted on Friday, 28 November 2008 at 4:58 PM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/189
Comments
Very cool. Maybe it points to a unique value of the Post. Not to deliver information that can go through the Net. But to deliver stuff, that has an information component. Your post is a nice example of how people love stuff. Information? cheap, easy and usually just noise.
Since there is lots of stuff that is ordered on line and has to be delivered by someone, perhaps they should focus on that. While first class mail and bulk rate mail will probably decrease because of the net, delivering stuff will probably increase as the net gains traction.
Posted by Michael Josefowicz on Saturday, 29 November 2008 at 10:21 PM
The only way this could get better would be variable data chocolate rapid prototyping, which it almost is already.
Fitting that you would bookmark it on del.icio.us!
Posted by Ryon on Thursday, 4 December 2008 at 12:01 AM