Time Warner Cable
Prospects warm to dimensional mailer
Situation:
Time Warner Cable of Western New York wanted to make sure its existing cable customers were aware of the benefits of bundling their cable service with Time Warner’s Road Runner high-speed online product and its digital phone service.
“Time Warner was fighting some competition in the region,” says Mickey Farber, EVP, account service for SKM Group, the Depew, NY-based agency Time Warner enlisted to help it with the initiative.
Approach:
Because of the fierce competition, Time Warner gave SKM just three weeks to complete the project, which included creating a three-dimensional mailer and a self-mailer.
“Time Warner wanted to play off the theme of ‘bundling up,’ as people around here are used to doing for winter,” says Carol Walier, senior account executive for SKM.
True to this concept, SKM created a three-dimensional mailer that included a pair of gloves with Time Warner branding as well as a self-mailer depicting people bundling up to stay warm. Time Warner also wanted to promote some of its new content, such as Movie Link, Road Runner Photo Show and Road Runner Rhapsody, Farber adds.
SKM successfully put all of this information into the mailers and created a three-dimensional box in the allotted time frame. Time Warner mailed 65,000 self-mailers and 10,000 of the boxes to its Buffalo, NY-area customers who did not currently have bundled services at the beginning of December. Each self-mailer and dimensional piece contained the same information.
Results:
The dimensional mailer tripled the results of the self-mailer; however, the campaign as a whole had a lower response rate than previous campaigns.
“Response rates are typically lower during those six weeks [between Thanksgiving and Christmas] than other times of the year,” Farber explains.
–Nathan Golia
DAL Investment
Self-mailer test gets high scores
Approach: Investment advisor DAL Investment Company wanted to increase awareness and assets for its new FundX ETF Aggressive Upgrader Fund. In December, the company tested a tri-fold self-mailer featuring one specific mutual fund against its usual 22-page magalog, which highlights seven funds. Working with printer The Ballantine Corp., DAL printed the mailer on high-quality paper stock in four color with a toll-free number.
Results: DAL experienced a 50% increase in cash flow on the self-mailer. The company plans to send similar mailers in the future along with unique phone numbers and URLs for tracking purposes.
–Mary Hurn
MyFax
Messy office contest cleans up
Approach: Looking to build an online community for Internet fax service MyFax, parent company Protus IP Solutions developed the MyFax Messy Office Contest. Running for five weeks this winter, the contest offered $10,000 to the person with the messiest office plus additional prizes to nine finalists. Contestants could post either a photo or video of their office to a microsite. The contest was promoted on Facebook, YouTube, via online and radio advertising and public relations outreach to bloggers.
Results: The microsite drew nearly 20,000 visitors during the five weeks, and a video created for the contest and uploaded to YouTube received more than 650 views.
–Chantal Todé
Privateview
Gary Schotz, VP, creative director, Draftfcb
Time Warner’s campaign had an excellent mailbox presence and fun premium. Conceptually, however, the idea of using the word bundle both ways was what my old ECD would call, “being clever with a ‘K’.” It was probably the first idea that popped into everyone’s heads. Of course, you could argue that if it requires too much thought, it might not be worth doing. DAL’s effort was not very response oriented, not interestingly designed and not evocatively written. Looks, feels and sounds a little phoned in. MyFax certainly created an interesting promotion. I can see why the response rates went through the roof. Plus, seeing the winning entry made me feel better about the disheveled piles of paper on my desk.
