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Background

Directory is a quarterly magazine that publishes the best response-driven communications from around the world. In every issue there are at least 40 case studies of TV, press, digital and integrated campaigns that have worked disproportionately well because of the thinking that went into them.

Idea

The editor, Patrick Collister, was giving one of the keynote talks at the Cannes Advertising Festival. His talk was titled “Stuffed, Stamped and Licked” and was designed to show that mail is not the ugly sister of communications media but advertising’s Cinderella.

The problem was that his seminar was the second of the entire festival, at 11am on the morning of Sunday June 20^th, when the festival had only been ‘live’ for two hours and only 1,000 of the 8,000 festival attendees were in town. Of these, many were still in bed with their first hangover of the week.

The task was to attract as many registered Cannes delegates to the talk as possible in the 24 hours before Patrick walked on stage.

The solution was to turn the poster advertising the talk into a letter, thus bringing to life the medium he would be talking about.

60 A3 posters were put up in the Palais des Festivals and 120 flyers handed out in the foyer and on the Croisette.

Results

Despite the seminar being just about the first on the first day, when hardly anyone was around, the talk attracted an audience of nearly 300.

Anecdotal feedback about the poster itself was positive. The festival director called the editor to say “Like your poster” and another of the festival team e-mailed to say it was the first time she had ever seen a poster for one of the seminars on the inside of the ladies’ lavatories.

To date, Directory has been mailed back its own posters from Croatia, Sweden, Denmark, France and twice from the UK.

Our Thoughts

The truth is, we weren’t expecting anyone to actually fold up, stick together and mail the poster back so the fact that we have received six so far is 100% above expectation.

I keep banging on about how mail can double up as ambient communication and, in some instances, even outdoor (Rapp New Zealand’s ‘FATSO’ idea for Sky TV, for instance. Details at www.directnewideas.com). When thinking about this project, we wondered how we could turn a poster into a letter and get one idea to work across two discrete channels, which it did.

Firstly it succeeded as a poster in attracting an audience to the talk and secondly, turned into a letter, it has helped us establish five new relationships. So far, we estimate the ROI at £6 for every £1 spent. Slowly but surely and with the help of those super people at Profero, Directory is edging towards solvency.