JOHN CAPLES INTERNATIONAL AWARDS
1999
Gold: American Isuzu Motors Inc., VehiCROSS
Isuzu's
outrageous new vehicle, the VehiCROSS, was ready to enter the market...sort
of. Well, actually they asked us to sell the first 500 within four months,
but unfortunately they had very few photos and none of them a perfect
representation of the entire vehicle. They also had a miniscule budget...about
$125,000.
Undaunted, WLC and the team at M\S Database worked together to develop
a program which led to the sale of 500 VehiCROSSes, SIGHT UNSEEN, in less
than three months. How did we do it? We called upon our now-extensive
experience with premiums for test drive and purchase, and with M\S's extraordinary
slice and dice of data found our tiny but powerful universe of 'early
adapters' crossed with 'collectors' and Isuzu enthusiasts. The package,
slightly oversized in a vellum envelope and an offer of a limited-edition
silverprint photo of VehiCROSS in action by an acclaimed automotive photographer...and
you have a winner in every sense of the word.
1998 Gold: Remington Arms Industrial Division
Remington Arms creates a piece of equipment which
is nicknamed the Master Blaster...designed to clean out the interior of
industrial kilns far faster than traditional methods.
This
direct marketing mandate was to blast past the competition to sell this
equipment, valued at tens of thousands of dollars apiece, by appealing
to both the plant supervisors and the plant managers of specially targeted
facilities. These are folks who traditionally ignore most direct mail.
However, when the plant supervisor received a pair of boxing gloves with
a brochure that colorfully exclaimed Crunch! Pow! Bam! in Batman-fashion,
and a compelling but brief letter inviting further conversation, they
responded and purchased beyond our client's wildest dreams. The plant
manager received a stopwatch with a brochure and letter highlighting time
savings.
The bottom line: enormously successful, record breaking sales for Remington.
An even better up-side is that Remington continues to enjoy more profit
as they sell the Master Blaster's 'ammunition' to these customers.
1997 Silver: Tinibini Children's Wear
A small retailer with a dream to create hip, fun
kid's clothes with the natural 'Green Cotton' content, Tinibini mailed
only for about a year...but in spite of a very low budget got acclaim
by the Caples Awards judges for its offbeat funny direction and the quality
of its candid photography.
Our concept of using black and white shots of kids, and doing our own
tongue-in-cheek Dewar's Profiles of the kids (Yes, we really interviewed
them and got these answers), we created a catalog that stood out from
the crowd of product-driven catalogs with cute photos but no soul.
From the cover to the order form, the details and consistency of concept
made this catalog
a winner in the mail too, with a response rate to cold lists of about
2.5% while others would
typically get 1% or less to those same lists.
