We love doing holiday cards!!

Over the years, we've done a lot of holiday cards for a lot of clients, especially JTD Productions and radioUnleashed. Here below are a few of them that we've found with a short look through the digital filing cabinet. Enjoy!

(Click on any card to see it bigger!)

Above: a meditation on the commercialization of the holiday. Copy below:

Maybe the perfect holiday gift doesn’t go fast or go slow,

run on electricity, run on solar power, or make you run faster;

maybe the spirit of the season isn’t best embodied by

something that fills you up or makes you woozy

or tickles your fancy for just a moment or two

before the next big thing comes along to

steal your attention and affections.

Maybe it’s not something made by people,

many of whom work for less than minimum wage,

who slave away so that you can sit back or sit up

or stand up and shake your booty.

Nah.  It’s totally all of those things.

It’s music.  The best gift ever.

Just a thought . . . 

. . . from all of us at JTD Productions and radioUnleashed.

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A little bit of retro kitschy fun, signed off on the price tag.

* * * 

Above: a heart, die-cut out of a postcard with suggestions about filling your heart.

* * * 

A poetic rumination on ornament hangers and the connections that are made over the holiday season.

* * * 

Above: popular holiday songs of different religions and a message of respect and joy.

* * * 

Above and below, front and back. Classic or fun holiday albums with a little JTD branding slipped in for good measure.

And here below are some fun "don't forget JTD for your holiday party" cards from the past few years.

Above: a fun musical menu.

Below: connect the dots with JTD.

* * * 

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Red and green always spells festive.

* * * 

Below: a radioUnleashed holiday card:

And one for the fine folks at Blue Mountain Bistro, who wanted a retro fun card like the tv dinner one above:

Preston Schlebusch world domination tour continues

Those of you following along at home will recall that last year we did a logo for travel/destination photogs Preston Schlebusch. And those of you who are habitually sitting in the front of the classroom will no doubt recall that, for their logo, we made them a flag. An actual, physical flag. Sure, there was a photoshop version of it, but the real logo, the one that actually reinforced who they are and what they do and WHAT THEIR BRAND STANDS FOR, was a flag, and it was meant to be taken with and photographed everywhere they went. Well, it's been taken to some places and, if we say so ourselves, it looks pretty darned good. It's one thing to do good work for a client; it's something else completely when that client runs with it. All over the globe. Thanks Preston Schlebusch. Love, Woodstock Organic Concepts.

MIssion statement redux

Over the years, we’ve really developed a healthy respect for the power of putting your business and marketing ducks in a row.  Toward this end, we always like to start our branding efforts by taking a gander at our client’s mission statement and, if there isn’t one, we get them to write one. Oh sure, we’ll wordsmith it for them later, but as we always say (okay, this is actually the first time):

More than any other piece of communication that will be developed during the course of a marketing and image management campaign, the thoughts behind a mission statement need to come straight from the client.

So. Why does a company need a mission statement?

A mission statement is your company’s reason for being. It should perfectly and honestly reflect why your company exists and what you want it to do.

Is your mission to make people happy?  Walt Disney company’s mission statement: To make people happy. (see bottom of page)

Is your mission to make people money? At Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, our mission is to help you build a secure financial future.

Is it to save people money? Wal-Mart: To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.

Is it to save the environment? Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Is it to save the world? Google: Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Or maybe it's to explore the universe? The USS Enterprise's 5 year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

A mission statement is your organization’s reason for being. It succinctly states the goal(s) of your business and, if it’s done well, it can and should be an inspiring and useful guide for the bulk of your business decisions.

How does one go about writing a mission statement?

Here are some guidelines:

• Make it super honest. If your mission is solely to build up your soda pop company so that you can eventually sell it to Coca-Cola, say so. If the mission of your association of evil geniuses is complete global annihilation, say that. Don’t be shy and don’t be coy. Say what it is that you dream. Make it personal.

• Make it short. Seriously, the best mission statements (for our money) can be easily remembered by everyone who has a hand in making it come true.

• Make it clear. Please. No jargon, no needlessly big words, no attempts to make it sound important. It IS important already just by the fact of it being YOUR mission.

• Make it simple. So that it will look good on a bronze plaque and on a cotton/poly blend t-shirt.

• Make it inspiring. Make it important, make it meaningful and evocative: dream big. This thing is going to be your road map for a long time.

• Make it about you and about them. Unless your business only exists to profit itself, include your customer in your mission statement.  Disney, Morgan Stanley and Wal-Mart (above) all do so explicitly. Patagonia and Google do so implicitly.

• Keep it current. If you wrote it 5 years ago, your mission might have changed since then. Revisit and start again at the top of this list.

Mission statements vs.vision statements

Many marketers split up the mission statement into two distinct-ish parts: a mission statement that answers the question “what do we do?” and a vision statement that answers the question “why are we here?” Some use the vision statement to put forth their grand goal (“To make the world a better place for humanity”) while others put that in their mission statement. Some use the mission statement to share how their company might make that grand goal a reality (“A laptop in the hands of every person.”) while others put that in their vision statement.

Here at Woodstock Organic Concepts, we like to put them all together in a mission statement that answers both questions: what does your company do and how will it help your customers.

A strong mission statement provides a strong foundation upon which you can build a strong company. If your company doesn’t have one, just sit down and write one, there’s nobody better equipped to do so than you.

Once you’ve got your mission statement done and you’re ready to move on to the next step of image management, give us a call, because…

The mission of Woodstock Organic Concepts is to help clients to better understand and leverage their 
inherent strengths in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

          - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

 Since we originally published this little guide to mission statements, it's come to our attention that the bean counters at the helm of the Walt Disney Corporation have revised their mission statement. Here's the new one:

"The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to be one of the world's leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world."

Guess which one we prefer?

Dude.

Well, it originally aired way back in like 2008, when we were all barely old enough to drink, but this classic Bud Light spot still gets cited by us a lot, mostly because people still use the word a lot, and in a lot of these ways. It could be because it's kind of a neat trick to get all those different stories out of one word. Kind of like "thesperobics," in which one single phrase is interpreted by different people in different ways. Enjoy:

Super Bowl Ad score card

Well, the Super Bowl has come and gone and now all we're left with is the interminable play by play of the plays and the ads and everything else that could possibly be dissected by pundits one last time or one last way. Which is what we're about to do, RIGHT NOW!!

(We've only embedded our favorite spots here, if you want to watch all of them, go do it somewhere else.)

FIRST QUARTER

Kim Kardashian for T-mobile. OMG. Seriously. We suffer from Kardashian fatigue. Totally tuned out.  GRADE: D+

Skittles huge bicep ad. Funny but a short joke. And at over $8million a minute for Super Bowl ad time, maybe this one shoulda been a :15. GRADE: B-

Carnival cruise lines. Sweet and profound, a serious change in direction from the frolicsome fun of cruise ads past featuring Iggy Pop singing "Lust for life". VO by JFK. A little bit of a disconnect. GRADE: C+

Snickers. Another execution of their great "You're not you when you're hungry" campaign, we love it and it's our clear first quarter winner. GRADE: A

BMW with Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel. Sweet, fun spot illustrating the central idea: "Big ideas take a little getting used to" and making us really want to know more about BMW's electric car. GRADE: A-

Game of War with Kate Upton. Boring. GRADE: D

Turbo Tax. Kinda fun. GRADE: B-

Toyota "How great I am" Supposed to be inspirational spot using the VO of Muhammed Ali. Too much copy and a bad mix. Meh. GRADE: C-

SECOND QUARTER

Always. "Like a girl" People love this spot. OUR GRADE: B-

Toyota "My bold dad" Touched the heartstrings of the dads in the office but didn't make us want to buy a Toyota. GRADE: C+

NoMore.org. This spot draws on a real 911 call. If you haven't seen it, watch it below. One of our favorites and poignantly on message. GRADE: A-

Squarespace. "DreamingwithJeff.com. The dude abides in this fun spot for the web dev. company. Would love to see how many people visited that site. GRADE: A-

Microsoft. This kid born with no legs is a symbol of how Microsoft is dedicated to helping people and making the world a better place. Meh. GRADE: C

Discover. Another ho hum spot with "twins" and a surprise in the middle. Ack. GRADE: D+

Fiat. Cinematic and cute. Second quarter winner. Watch. GRADE: A

GoDaddy. They had a fun spot with a puppy but pulled it after advance criticism. Wimps. GRADE: F

Esurance. With Walter White from "Breaking bad". Kind of a stretch. GRADE: C

McDonald's "Pay with lovin'" Huh? Really? GRADE: B-

Nationwide "Make safe happen" Narrated by a kid who died in a "preventable" accident. Pretty spot, well told, major buzzkill. GRADE: B-

WeatherTech. Floor mats for your car. Boring. GRADE: C-

Weight Watchers. "All you can eat" Kinda good. Liked the copy. GRADE: B+

Doritos "Middle seat" Zzzzz. Haven't we seen this before? GRADE: D

Nissan "With dad" Absentee dad shows up years too late and somehow inexplicably bonds with his kid in his Nissan. No. GRADE: D

Dove Men+Care. Ooooh, dad's are strong and sensitive!! Hold the presses. Total snooze fest. Nicely shot though. GRADE: C

Avocados from Mexico. Imaginary draft picks. Absurd and kinda funny. GRADE: B-

Coca-Cola. Kind of a cute idea, kinda nicely executed. Kind of an ok spot. Expected more from Coke. GRADE: C

Nationwide. "Invisible Mindy" Again. Kind of a cute idea, nicely executed, fun cameo. GRADE: B-

Budweiser "Lost dog" Trying so hard to tug on the heart strings. Just misses. GRADE: C

Lexus "Make some noise" Huh. No. Not so much. GRADE: C

THIRD QUARTER

NFL "Together we make football" Ok. We loved this spot. Super simple, not overburdened with lots of hard-to-follow-in-a-noisy-living-room profound copy culled from historical speeches by celebrities. Simple, fun, and emotionally true. Resonant, even. We hazard a guess that this, perhaps by dint of it being a self-promotion pieces, will be overlooked as one of the best spots of the SB this year. Nicely cut, too. GRADE: A

Budweiser. "Brewed the hard way" Ok. The taste of Budweiser straight out of a keg is the taste of our youth and we're happy to see the King of Beer's taking a rock-n-roll approach to their "golden suds"; we just wish we weren't so attracted to the tasting flights of micro-brews that they disparaged in the spot. That SHIT looks GOOOOD. GRADE: B

Jeep "Beautiful lands" Nicely put together but we just couldn't put aside the delicious paradoxes in the spot. Woody Guthrie's "This land is your land" is a deeply political song about economic inequality and Jeep's relationship to the environment is problematic. Apart from that, great spot. GRADE: C+

Jublia. For toenail fungus. Terrible, horrible ad with crappy graphics and product demo and we love it. Really. Here's an ad that really stuck out and really promised concrete results and even told you how they would happen! It's not art, people, it's advertising, and it only exists to sell products. And we bet Jublia's piece of shit piece of beauty is gonna do just that.  GRADE: A

T-Mobile "Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler" Fun spot directed by our pal Steve "S" Miller.

Grade A good stuff. Third quarter winner.

Kia "The perfect getaway". Pierce Brosnan sending up his Bond work. Mildly amusing. GRADE: B-

Dodge "Wisdom" Celebrating its 100th anniversary, Dodge lined up a bunch of centenarians to share their words of wisdom. Fun stuff. GRADE: B+

Microsoft "Estella's brilliant bus"  Just a little boring and ordinary.  GRADE: C

Sprint "Super apology" Farm animals, price cuts. Boring. GRADE: D+

Lexus "Let's play". Here's a fine example of a spot that didn't really need any copy at all. The viewer just got the message from the video. We likeeee. GRADE: B+

Clash of clans. "Revenge" Very funny and a swell use of Liam Neeson's one-note delivery. GRADE: A

FOURTH QUARTER

Heroes Charge. Ugh. Especially after the awesome Liam Neeson spot, this one's more than just a little ho-hum.  GRADE: D

Wix.com. Hey! It's Bret Favre! Hey! So what!! GRADE: C-

Victoria's Secret. Hey! Look! Sexy models looking sexy in sexy lingerie! Zero imagination but probably fairy effective. GRADE: B

Doritos. "When pigs fly" Ack. No. Just dumb. GRADE: C-

Mercedes-Benz. "Fable" Cute and well done and gorgeous car that would look right at home in some of that Victoria's Secret stuff. We like it. GRADE: B+/A-

Bud Light. "Real life PacMan" Kind of a convoluted prank pulled on an unsuspecting, yet game dude. Culminating in a kinda cool real-life game of PacMan. GRADE: B-

Loctite Glue. "Positive feelings" Realllllly positive feelings. Looooove this spot. So delightfully peculiar. David Lynch meets the directorial debut of Charles Nelson Reilly with a soundtrack by Reggae Weird Al. Clear 4th quarter and game winner. GRADE: A+

Mophie "All-powerless" Fun spot imagines what would happen if God (played by a black guy who is NOT Morgan Freeman) were controlling the earth on his cell phone that had run out of charge.  GRADE: B+

"To travel is to take a journey into yourself" - Danny Kaye

Recently, our client sent us this photo (below) from the Galapagos. Well . . . a) WE wanna go to the damn Galapagos and b) this photo was the missing link in the story that follows and we were happy to finally get it.

You see, a few months ago, travel and destination photographers Preston Schlebusch approached us to do a logo for them. 

A pic we love from the Preston Schlebusch archives

Now, usually, we wanna do a whole brand exploratory and whatnot, but frequently clients only want what they want, despite our cajoling and whining, and in those cases, we try to give it to them. In this case, a simple logo to go along with the new website they were designing for themselves was what they wanted.

So we started in, thinking about the world and camera lenses and cutesy type treatments and whatnot . . . 

. . . until we finally hit on the idea of a flag. Now, we'd done a flag before for Pinko Records . . . 

. . . and it turned out great and when we told the Preston-Schlebusch client about it, they liked the idea and that's how we found ourselves, one day, gathered around the client's conference table with a bunch of paper and a big batch of colored pencils.

We made deeply symbolic flags representing sea, sky and mountains, beaches and world domination and simpler flags with fun graphic elements. But, as so often happens in these cases, the client had an interest: they had a collection of geckos that they'd brought home from trips all over the world, and they thought it would be nice to include a gecko on the flag. So we started looking at geckos and drawing some of our own.

We really liked number 3 but the client liked #4 and we ended up going with a version of that. Here's how it looked in the mock up that the client bought:

For the finished flag, we stole some elements from some of our client's gorgeous photography, a Mediterranean sky here, a Caribbean leaf there, et voila! a flag! Here below is the final Photoshop version of their logo.

And here it is with their name and tag line:

So the next step was to send the big Photoshop version out to the flag printer and so that's what we did, and within a week or two, we had the brand new Preston Schlebusch flag, ready to go.

Here it is, below, in situ on the Keralan backwaters in India and below that on a patch of New Zealand beach. Stay tuned for more pics as they come in; the Preston Schlebusch folks are planting their flag all over the globe and we're thrilled to see it.

Booze, hooch, liquor, spirits, demon rum, the hard stuff...

Well, like lots of seasoned ad folks, we've done our share of booze advertising over the years. Enough to keep the whole of America intoxicated, inebriated, drunk, tipsy, plastered, smashed, blotto, blitzed, baked, blasted, bombed, sozzled, sauced, soaked, stinko, hopped up, gassed up, loaded, tight, loose, three sheets to the wind, and in their cups for a long long time.

Like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otj9yPNndB0

We've worked on more booze than you can shake a finger at: Absolut, Boru,  Captain Morgan (where we coined the word "chillax"), Celtic Crossing, Chivas Regal, Christiania, Ciroc, Courvoisier, Crown Royal, and many many others, whose names fall further down the alphabet. We've even worked on booze from the art side of our aisle once; this ad for Absolut:

What we always like about doing booze advertising is that we always like booze. We like the social aspect of it best and we like the effect it has on us. We like whipping up a mean new cocktail for friends and trying a new micro-brew beer. We love a big Aussie shiraz with a steak on the barbie and a not too dry Champagne to celebrate milestones. We love it all. But back to the advertising part of it: we love sharing that love with others. We love creating an image for a product in a category that is wide open receptive for some crazy cool images. We love print ads and table tents and coasters and bar events and clever sponsorships and everything.

So, here's a small batch of creative hootch we've distilled from all those years of making liquor ads:

BORU - Vodka from Ireland

The client had some research that said people were sick of new vodka brands and all their B.S. advertising. So they decided that Boru would be the no-B.S. brand and sent us packing to execute around this idea.

We loved it. And, as it turned out, Boru's main product attribute (apart from being from Ireland) is that it's triple-distilled. An attribute that helped us to latch onto the concept of "clarity" as sort of the anti-B.S. positioning. Once that was in place, the campaign flowed like a Boru-tini: "Boruisms". Little gems of wisdom, aphorisms that would represent the anti-b.s. nature of our product. The tag line was easy to land on after the campaign had been decided and everyone loved the anti-b.s., straight-shooting line: "clarity from Ireland."

The campaign was a blast to work on and it won a bunch of awards, got a lot of press, and sales went up nearly 500%.

Not too shabby. Here below is some of the work:

CHIVAS REGAL - Blended scotch

Next up on our little trip down muddled memory lane is a fun campaign we did freelancing for TBWA/Chiat Day and the great Scott Carlson, who wanted "ArtForum" kinda musings defining what "it" is -- in the tag line, "You either have it or you don't." Some of the best of the batch are below:

CROWN ROYAL - Blended scotch

For Grey advertising, we created this campaign that came right straight out of their market research (yes, we loooove market research) that Crown Royal was a stepping stone brand that came after beer and Captain Morgan and before the single malts from the Isle of Islay. We came up with a bunch of fun headlines that completed the sentence "You reach a point where . . . " with lifestyle and age appropriate thoughts. Again, the tag line practically wrote itself: Crown Royal. The taste of experience.

SAUZA - A family of tequilas

While we wrote the campaign that eventually saw the light of day, it's this campaign, a runner up that everyone loved but no one loved enough, that we like best. Tequila in general (though it's changing a bit now) is a booze for a wild night out. We wanted Sauza to pay homage to that but also to be seen as slightly more upscale. These ads take a literary approach to the crazy nights in which Sauza tequila played a role: (click on them to see bigger.)

copy from the ad above:

I see the perro peligroso foaming in my direction, jerking hard against his strong chain, redefining in the fine earth his well-worn path of ever-fresh rage.  My own feet move fast, instinctually following invisibly numbered dance steps in the dirt, a half-mad mariachi tapping out a samba of safety as he skirts this canine arc of anger.  Each night I make this trip, and the shimmering reward waiting never loses its luscious luster.

Sauza

Live a legend.

So that's it for our small summation of lovely booze ads. A range of work representing differing product attibutes, different strategies and different targets.

We'd love to bring our little liquor storehouse of fresh ideas to help your new or old brand. Give us a call; we'll talk over a drink.

Business to business business

Well, we always loved the b2b stuff: the print ads, the occasional tv or radio spot and the meat and potatoes of it all - the direct mail. 

Quite possibly our love for direct mail comes from the fact that so much of it is exactly the same, which makes our job easier. Our custom, you see, when undertaking any image management (aka advertising) campaign is to look at what everyone else does, understand what rules they are all following, and then to go off and do something that cleverly breaks a whole bunch of those rules. And in direct mail, the rules are easy to spot and so the sky kinda really is the limit.

The rules seem to be this: write a letter and put it in an envelope. Write something teaser-ish on the outside of the envelope and wait for the business to come rolling in!!! Or, for the e-counterpart, write a big teaser headline and watch your email get opened. Then sit back and wait for the business to come rolling in!!! Naturally, we love these rules; 'cause they're so easy and so much fun to break.

Case #1 - O'Hare + Associates - National direct mail campaign

Well, we went to visit our friendly headhunter in NYC the other day and she said she'd find us some high paying freelance jobs and then she asked if, in the meantime, we might not like to do a little something for them, for the headhunting firm itself. "Sure," we chimed, and here's what happened next.

The boss came in, the big cheese, the head honcho, the guy with his name on the door and it turns out he's a most excellent guy and we totally hit it off. He had a piece of paper in his hand. It was filled with type. He wanted us to take it back to the workshop and work in a few semi-colons and one or two top-shelf adjectives and then he was gonna send it out to drum up business.

Well, after a short discussion, we had successfully talked him out of sending a letter and into doing something a little bit more noteworthy. Phew.

Our point of view on this is pretty simple: if you're engaging in a b2b campaign, your target audience gets a lot of letters exhorting them to use your goods or services, and, honestly, their assistants, the people who actually open the letters, don't even read them. So don't waste a second writing a letter to try to reach and persuade them. Just don't.

Well, the honcho bought our argument and away we went to the drawing board to create an ad that would drum up some business. We pitched him on doing a top to bottom branding of his company, complete with in-house and out-of-house image research, but he just wanted an ad, so that's what we did. A few of them. And some other stuff too.

Now, the client's competition is not just the other recruiting firms, it's also the online job boards and, increasingly, LinkedIn. The job boards are a little impersonal and so is LinkedIn; headhunters, on the other hand, do all of their real business face-to-face. They meet with the clients, they meet with the candidates, they make a match. They are much more like old time matchmakers, while the job sites are akin to online dating sites like match.com or okCupid.com.

We presented a few ideas, but the one we all liked best was a take-off on a poster that was very popular circa 1979:

Created by a student at UVA, Tom Shadyac, the poster was wildly popular and right on the money. Shadyac went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood (more here). And, following in the footsteps of so many other advertising greats, we stole the idea. Got theft? Our version is here below:

Well, this one was so popular, the client decided to do versions poking gentle fun at the stereotypes in each department of an ad agency. Here below are a couple of those:

And, below, a rough version of the next one:

Our client sent out 250 of these in each mailing and over the course of the 6 month campaign, got (he estimates) about 18 calls from ad agencies who wanted to talk with him. That's a respectable 7.2% response rate. Again, far far above the typical for direct mail or b2b.

Needless to say, the O'Hare client was thrilled.

Other details

• The posters are 17 x 11", suitable for hanging on the refrigerator in the common area of each agency.

• Instead of folding, we recommended sending the posters out in 2" diameter mailing tubes, so they'll arrive at their destinations not looking like all the other direct mail.

Case #2 - ClickRadio - National direct mail campaign

ClickRadio was a precursor to Pandora and music platforms such as that. The main difference was that the music "lived" on your computer, not in the cloud. (Which didn't really even exist back in those days.) A benefit to this was that when you purchased a song you heard on ClickRadio, it was already on your computer. Like Pandora, it worked with simple thumbs up or thumbs down interactivity. Once the individual user's likes and dislikes were known, the program used collaborative preferencing algorithms to predict which songs that user would likely like and which he or she would likely not like. Then it brought you "more of the music you like and less of the music you don't like", a promise we made in consumer advertising.

Here below is a trade campaign we did in lieu of a press release. The goal was simple: drive traffic to the website. It was an enormous success. Recipients got a series of 4 mostly "blind" cards, delivered to them in an envelope. "Mostly" because each had a "copyright ClickRadio, Inc. 2000" on the top of the back side. Each card illustrated one of the points of the ClickRadio manifesto ("Personal preferences must always be respected", e.g.) and they were sent out in one-week intervals. The final card contained the manifesto in its entirety (worth a read, if we do say so ourselves) and a simple URL. After the campaign ran, visits to the website were up over 300% and, though we don't have numbers on media requests, we do recall that the client, ClickRadio, was very very happy.

So, here below are the 4 teaser cards and the 5th, the teaser with URL, that kicked ass for ClickRadio back in the day:

Case #3 - Samuel's - Local direct mail campaign

Samuel's is a Rhinebeck tradition. They're our local old time candy store and also the purveyors of the best coffee in town. A big chunk of their business comes from holiday gift boxes and last year, they wanted to drum up a little more holiday business. We created this poster for them that was put up in selected locations around town. It's a simple, sweet message, "Shop local, ship global", helping local clients understand that their local store has a broader reach then their E. Market Street storefront. It worked great, brought in a bunch of new orders and (proof is in the pudding, here) the client is planning on repeating it this year too.

below: holiday gift packaging ideas for one of Samuel's clients.

Case #4 - radio Unleashed - National direct mail campaign

Background

Client radio Unleashed is a nationally syndicated radio program and they wanted to send out a letter to prospective stations that might be interested in picking up their show. "A letter?" we said, with full-tilt maximum disdain and condescension, (we're trying to become more tactful, really we are), "letters are stupid!" (see parenthetical just above) "What you need is something that will cut through the clutter." It's true, it's totally true. Our point of view on letters is exactly that: you send a letter to a prospective client, that client's secretary isn't even gonna read it. (Have we said that before?) Send something fun and funky. Something that makes your point in a way they haven't seen before. Something memorable. And so that's what we came up with.

The creative solution
(Keep in mind, our target audience is program directors at radio stations; they've seen it all.)

Pee. Yup. Pee. Specifically pee stains on a piece of newspaper. Make pee stains on a piece of newspaper and send it out to your list with a little note on the bottom of the paper that says something like "Good radio is no accident." Fun. Different. Gross. Still, it will totally cut through. How many times do people get something like that in the mail? And if your branding is a dog logo and a tagline "music with teeth", then it's perfect. No? Yes! (see rU branding case study here.)

The creative

So here's how we did it. Yellow food coloring in a spray bottle sprayed on newspaper pages, a sticker on the bottom and nice printed letterhead envelopes. Like so:

And just to make sure that: a) the envelope got opened, and b) when it did get opened, people understood what they were seeing (and what they weren't seeing), we wrote on the back of each envelope:

So here's how it went: (sorry, we took the photos and we're gonna use them)

Grossed out? But still think it's a cut through the clutter and bolster the branding direct mail effort? Well our client got a response rate of 10% on this. Pee = the sweet smell of success. (Keep in mind, a typical direct mail effort yields a 2-4% response rate.)