This page contains an archive of all entries with the category case studies. Oldest entries appear first.
Get a Degree
Today there's increasing worldwide competition in the further education market as many new colleges and universities are popping up around the world and the lucrative international student market is slipping away.
One opportunity to leverage VDP in further education marketing is by making prospectuses more relevant. A university or college prospectus typically contains a lot of generic content covering all different faculties, courses, sports and activities — the majority of which is largely irrelevant to any single prospective student.
One good example of how you can relevance to prospectuses comes from Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, where prospective students can request their own personalised undergraduate prospectus and receive a personalised e-mail, webpage and prospectus (online and/or print).
Continue reading "Get a Degree" »
Posted on Friday, 19 October 2007 at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
VDP Hall of Shame
Over the years, I've built up a collection of select VDP applications, both good and bad. One of the worst VDP applications that I've ever received was a direct mail postcard from a VDP vendor promoting their software.
The DM postcard was sent by Datalogics promoting their DL Formatter VDP product (now Printable FusionPro). I received mailer in 2004, shortly before Datalogics sold their assets and technologies in DL Formatter to Printable.
Continue reading "VDP Hall of Shame" »
Posted on Tuesday, 30 October 2007 at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Print Good Enough to Eat
You can personalise anything these days, including candy. Mars have offered personalised M&M's for some time now. While this makes a novel gift, it's probably not a great medium for branded promotional merchandise, as your brand will only last until its eaten... I wonder how they print on the shells? Inkjet, at a guess.
Posted on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 at 3:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
“Dear John”
One struggle that marketers face with direct mail campaigns is getting the DM piece noticed. Putting a name on a letter no longer has the same rate of cut-through as it did two decades ago. However, someone dreamt up a unique solution to capture attention using a simple personalised letter; make the text big — very big. This "Dear John" letter, created for an apparent husband, appeared on a billboard in Brooklyn sparking an immediate hit with the media.
"Emily" even went to the effort of posting her own blog, detailing Steven’s infidelities and how she got her revenge, with photos of her defacing his car and spreading malicious emails using his work email account. However, it wasn't long before identical billboard photos popped up on websites taken in LA and Chicago and observers caught-on that this wasn't a vengeance attack, but a clever word-of-mouth marketing campaign for Court TV.
While the media breathed may have breathed a sigh of disappointment about this hoax, it certainly proved that a plain old personalised letter with the right message, at the right size, can be effective!
Posted on Monday, 26 November 2007 at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
My Monopoly
Hasbro have dreamt up a great gift; a personalised monopoly set. You can customise your own monopoly board with property and station names in your neighbourhood. Try it for yourself at www.mymonopoly.com.
Posted on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Dear Harper Eliot
Happy New Year and all that. I arrived back at work today to several zillion emails and a pile of last-minute/after-thought Christmas cards which were mailed a little too late. Among the pile was a personalised printed card from a VDP software vendor (who shall remain anonymous). They spelt my name correctly, but in the wrong order. The card proudly stated that it been created using their software, but I really wasn't impressed. It just goes to show that no matter how simple a VDP application may seem (you can't really get much simpler than this one), there's always room for error.
Posted on Monday, 7 January 2008 at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
It Keeps Getting Better
Over the past couple of years I've seen an increasing number of video-based image personalisation applications used in online viral campaigns. These applications have either been stitch-based, where multiple pre-recorded clips are stitched together on the fly to create a composite movie sequence (like Supporters Cheer Up), or they incorporate a static personalised image and zoom or pan the image to give the effect that it's part of the movie (like Meet Dexter).
However, there's an new campaign getting a lot of attention, although I'm guessing the majority of site visitors don't understand what it's promoting. It appears to be for a Brazilian beer brand named 'Boa', but my Brazilian Portuguese is pretty non-existent, so I can't be sure. Once you've punched in a couple of names on a form, you see the names incorporated in tattoos within a video sequence.
Continue reading "It Keeps Getting Better" »
Posted on Sunday, 13 January 2008 at 9:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
My Hero
Hero Books are new series of personalised soccer books that have recently emerged from Digital Logic, an Australian XMPie customer. Digital Logic join a handful of other XMPie customers who already offer personalised books for children.
While the concept of personalising childrens books is certainly nothing new (I recall receiving one 20 years ago), digital colour printing has enabled print providers to move personalisation past mono printing on colour offset shells, to personalise both text and illustrations in full colour. Butler and Tanner were one of the first to introduce this level of personalisation with Dream Books (using XMPie PersonalEffect). Other XMPie users who offer personalised childrens books include Childhood Heroes from Syndey-based U&I Direct, and Nick Jr. from Rex Three in Florida.
Posted on Friday, 18 January 2008 at 4:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Not Another Calendar!
It's that time of year again. Over the past few weeks, various 2008 calendars have been landing on my desk. Personalised image calendars are a strong trend this year and while I'm an advocate of personalising calendars, I'm not so sure about personalised images. By the time you get through to December and you've seen your name appear written in sand, clouds, food, and other scenes, the personalisation starts to loose its effectiveness and becomes somewhat annoying.
Among the many personalised calendars I've received this year is one from XMPie. This flip-book format calendar arrived in a CD jewel case, and while the calendar design is very "busy" and somewhat underwhelming, they've put a lot of effort into creating a supporting personalised website. Check mine out at calendar.xmpie.com/EliotHarper.
Continue reading "Not Another Calendar!" »
Posted on Tuesday, 22 January 2008 at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ave a Word
I thought it's time to share another online viral campaign. Although this one's a couple of years old now, it still deserves a mention due to its viral effectiveness and numerous creative awards which include Silver, Cannes Lion 2006 and Best Interactive Campaign, Adobe Design Awards.
London-based agency, Glue, created an ambitious and unique viral ad for MINI to tie in with the launch of the new MINI Cooper S with JCW GP Kit. The agency used Flash-based interactive video stitching techniques to create highly effective, personalised experience.
Continue reading "Ave a Word" »
Posted on Wednesday, 20 February 2008 at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Baa
I stumbled across an interesting Web site today, featured in this months edition of Marketing Magazine. In the Netherlands, new knitwear brand Flocks gives customers details about the individual animals that provided the wool for their sweaters, hats and mittens.
Each item can be traced back to a single woolly source, be it a sheep, goat, alpaca or rabbit. Since one animal supplies enough fleece for one garment, each garment is tagged with a specific animal's ID number, and comes with a certificate; the animals passport. Passport information includes the animals breed, weight, year and place of birth, along with a photo. Now that's not a baa'd use of personalisation!
click images to enlarge
Posted on Monday, 25 February 2008 at 8:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Listen to This!
We've just finished exhibiting at ad:tech, an interactive marketing conference held in Sydney (and other cities worldwide). We went along to demonstrate to delegates how XMPie can be leveraged as an interactive content publishing platform, shifting it far outside the boundaries of cross-channel direct marketing.
We created a demo application of a fictional music online store, named 'earfull', where users can check out new releases for their favourite genre, shop for music and gifts, and essentially have a complete 'Amazon-style' tailored shopping experience—completely driven by XMPie's Interactive Content Port (ICP) technology.
Continue reading "Listen to This!" »
Posted on Friday, 14 March 2008 at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Outdoor VDP
I stumbled on a couple of outdoor VDP applications this week. I'd like to remind readers that I don't just focus on print-related VDP, but look at both online and offline use of variable-data publishing. Today, I've got a couple of applications that are stuck somewhere between the two.
The first application appeared as an outdoor campaign for Mini Cooper last year, featuring on a billboard in San Francisco. The New York Times published a story on this innovative campaign and use of outdoor VDP. The article explains that the boards, which usually carry typical advertising, are programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob.
Continue reading "Outdoor VDP" »
Posted on Friday, 11 April 2008 at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
XMPie and Flex
Application Architect Tim Perrett has moved the VDP boundary once again, this time by building a demo application integrating into XMPie, purely written in Flex (his first Flex project). He's even writing to the database dircectly from Flex through XMPie ICP. Another testimony to the open, flexible architecture of XMPie PersonalEffect.
Continue reading "XMPie and Flex" »
Posted on Wednesday, 30 April 2008 at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Your Message Goes Here
I stumbled across yourmessagegoeshere.com today; a new site developed by DME. It appears to be technology demonstration of their video personalisation services. You simply pick a theme, enter a personalised message for a friend or foe, then sit back and watch the result.
Some movie themes offer different stories and let you to pick a suitable ending. Also, some movies use pre-recorded popular names which are incorporated in the movie if a name matches the recipients' name.
Continue reading "Your Message Goes Here" »
Posted on Monday, 5 May 2008 at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
A Little Too Personal?
MSNBC published a story last month on how a small college in Pennsylvania targeted seven prospective students through a $120,000 advertising campaign by plastering the students' names on billboards, pizza boxes and gas pumps, and even aired a commercial on MTV, all in hopes of getting the chosen few to enroll.
I don't get this campaign for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it could easily backfire. Very easily. You really have to play the privacy game in the US and this is treading a very thin line. I'd be pretty annoyed if I saw my name plastered everywhere, it's almost like a sort of identity theft.
Continue reading "A Little Too Personal?" »
Posted on Sunday, 11 May 2008 at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
RIP Direct Mail
As I mentioned in an earlier post, in my copious free time I blog for Marketing Magazine. I've just posted an entry about those 'sweepstake prize' DM letters which continue to plague mailboxes today. While this type of DM has been around for 20 years or more, I really can't believe there's still an audience out there that are naive enough to fall for these type of offers.
With a lousy use of personalisation together with misleading offers, I'm concerned that the target audience (almost exclusively pensioners) are being exploited to ultimately make a purchasing decision to buy products that they probably don't need or want.
Read the full story on marketingmag.com.au »
Posted on Friday, 13 June 2008 at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Telstra Bill
I just received a new-looking Telstra phone bill in the mail last week. For those of you who aren't from down-under, Telstra is Australia's leading telecommunications company with 9.6 million fixed line and over 9.3 million mobile subscribers. The bill used to be printed on offset shells, but has recently migrated to a full-colour digital form, printed by Salmat BusinessForce on a fleet of Fuji Xerox 980 digital colour presses.
This new bill is much easier to review than the previous format as it contains a breakdown of charges and billing details without call itemisation. Customers requiring a detailed list of calls can use online billing or opt to receive a detailed paper bill. By removing call itemisation shortens each bill to around two pages in length, which in turn will save Telstra 260 million sheets of A4 paper a year.
Continue reading "Telstra Bill" »
Posted on Sunday, 20 July 2008 at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)