Junk mail that isn't junk.
When I was a kid, I liked to draw pictures of my favorite heroes on the Philadelphia Eagles, people like tight end Pete Retzlaff or flanker (what we called wide receivers back then) Tommy McDonald. All my efforts were for naught – my drawing skills were beyond redemption – but it foreshadowed what would become a lifelong interest in art direction and design.
It led me during the early stages of my working life to develop an interest in typography, color, and texture. I collected boxes of paper samples in my office. I would routinely sketch crude comps for the copy I wrote, converting them (badly) into copywriter’s roughs. I grew accustomed to visiting printers to do press checks and approve press proofs. When I was lacking an idea, I tried to at least compensate by making the work look good, following the adage, “If you can’t be nice, be neat.”
It likely explains why, when I made the leap from client side to advertising agency, I brought a certain level of visual knowledge and, ideally, taste, to my work as a self-taught, wannabe designer transitioning to account person. It is one of the characteristics I had in common with Digitas founder Michael Bronner, who brought a sophisticated, one-of-a-kind visual sensibility to a discipline – direct mail -- largely populated by junk.
In truth, everything that choked our snail-mailboxes in those days was discardable crap, giving rise to the notion that, “Shit sells.” At Digitas we never gave into this, something I took with me when I migrated West to oversee Foote, Cone & Belding’s direct marketing operations, and later to New York’s Ammirati & Puris, a celebrated agency whose rigorous, exacting, and uncompromising reputation for stellar design was overseen by co-founding Art Director and Creative Hall-of-Fame member Ralph Ammirati.
The agency had just won Canada’s Labatt Brewery account – at the time the largest client shift in Canadian advertising history -- a company more accustomed to traditional broadcast than to connecting with consumers by mail, but the senior marketing executives there were open to trying something new, unconventional, and brand differentiating in a category where the chief competitor was Molson.
We needed something unexpected but effective; for that I called on my then- Creative Director Fred Schwartz, who in turn recruited one of our Art Directors, Elsebeth Thomsen, to collaborate on possible solutions.
Together we wrote a Creative Brief, with a mission to connect with people, foster two-way dialogue, collect research, capture names for database development, plus sell brand-related merchandise, housed in a communication that’s intrusive, cheeky, and irreverent, consistent with and reinforcing of Labatt’s brand ethos.
The result? What you see above: an oversize, stand-out-in-the-mailbox, pay-attention-to-me newsletter/magazine hybrid unlike anything consumers have received before, not just from a brewing company, but from any company.
Without getting too deeply into the weeds, the piece demonstrates arresting visuals and clever copy married to a sophisticated, ahead-of-its time use of technology, combined with innovative, figure-it-out print production. Beer the newsletter works, regardless if you simply glance at it, read it, or interact with it in a more substantial way.
It wasn’t junk mail, because it is anything but junk.
Did it succeed?
Traditional direct marketers would want to know how much beer got sold or how much merchandise got moved. These are not the figures I recall.
What I do recall is an effort that went a long way to supporting the Labatt brand, establishing a consumer relationship in a more intimate way than advertising ever could, along with encouraging a deeper sense of sustained customer loyalty. It was one of the efforts that led me to coin the phrase Brand Relationship Marketing as the form of direct marketing we preached and practiced, because this is exactly what we were doing: supporting the brand and building the relationship even as we drove sales and enlisted consumers to our cause.
I wondered if we could produce this or a similar piece of craft today. Our shop had the benefit of supportive, forward-thinking clients, sufficient time and money, plus general agency colleagues who were collaborative rather than combative. Most agencies these day have none of these things.
Even so, even if your shop lacks the schedule, a budget, or open-minded clients, the message from this is, even if you’re creating something as modest and time-compressed as a banner or a piece of social media/digital content, it still behooves you to bring as much idea-driven resourcefulness as you can muster to make the best possible work you can.
Nothing less is demanded of you, and nothing less is what you should strive to deliver.
