Kiss A Little Longer
Jimmy's a big fan of Cosmo.
Just kidding...but his wife is.
And she received a direct mail from Big Red - the chewing gum. It was directly addressed to her as a Cosmo reader.
As you can see from the piece (click the thumbnail to enlarge), the copy is a little thin. And a lot of space was wasted with red. I guess that was the point they were trying to get across.
So we looked this over and considered it for a few moments. We agreed, some dimly-lit-cafe-dweller art director is probably pretty proud of herself/himself for this piece. Well we're not.
Major component missing: any kind of response mechanism. How about, visit this website or clip this coupon for a free pack of gum? Nope.
One big question: how will they know whether or not this piece worked? How will they know whether they should send it again?
Of course, the answer is, they won't.
I'm used to seeing junk advertising like this in scented, glossy magazines - but in the ultimate direct medium - mail? Why incur the cost of such a powerful medium only to forgo the true power of it - the accountability?
Either the fancy agency who put this together forgot (unlikely) or was afraid to know the truth. (They call that brand building.)
Whatever the reason, don't make the same mistake with your mail.
Oh - and as for that brand building - later on, Jimmy realized they had included a sample (2 pieces of gum). The 2 pieces had melted a fused into one flat disk of gum - like you would see on the ground in a parking lot. It didn't do much for the brand.
They would have been better off with a coupon that required someone to take an action - for three reasons:
- They could have measured the response
- Customers would have gotten a fresh product
- They would only have given away gum to people who are interested
Common. You don't have to be a genius to figure this stuff out. What's going on with these people? Very frustrating.
