Summit Awards 2000 Silver: American Isuzu Commercial Truck Div., Fleet Campaign
Isuzu's commercial trucks have a good following in certain vocations - and the msdbm team did research to discover just what the priorities were that made these trucks so popular with, in this case, food service fleet managers and their companies.
With
a low budget but a killer database team, we opted to send out a few layers
of dimensional and traditional direct mail to our fleet managers in food
service, with the highly creative notion of telling them exactly what
would fit into an Isuzu commercial truck -- in this case, 500 gallons
of tomato paste. This grabbed their attention and the dialogue kicked
off. We also worked with them on offer strategy -- a gift certificate
for a national italian restaurant chain -- when they called to discuss
the features of the trucks. Highly and measurably successful! Agency:
msdbm
2000
Silver: Isuzu Trooper: The Big Gripper
The 1998 model year for Trooper was a tough one.
They had been unfairly slammed for Trooper's road behavior (later recinded
by Consumer Reports) and they had relaunched that year...but now it was
time to get more customers into the dealership and people were resisting.Add
to that the fact that Isuzu had not been successful bringing in customers
with direct mail during "off years" in which a vehicle had not
changed much.
We decided (Creative team included me as CD, Carlos Perez as AD and Otis
Maxwell as Writer) to aim for a key feature that stood up as highly important
to our specific market: Torque on Demand. The concept: use the new Isuzu
branding "life is too big for cars" and create a really BIG
package - like, about 19 inches across. Fill it with BIG printed material
and a really BiG letter -- then include a BIG GRIPPER - a rubber jar opener
that works much the way Torque on Demand works. An amazing success with
a huge return on investment. Agency: msdbm
2000 Bronze: Adaptec "Forget the Millennium"
When readying to launch a new version of their popular Easy CD Creator
software, Adaptec found that its already terrific software didn't need
that much improving! But how do you upgrade a happy audience who frankly
doesn't need much of an upgrade? How to you create NEWS when there is
not a lot of news to tell?
We decided that the few new features could be considered vital to CD Recording
for the enthusiast, and THEN we chose to use current events as our attention
getter. Nearing the Millennium, all the talk of distruction and doom were
becoming laughable to us, and we picked up on that theme which was to
say:
FORGET THE MILLENNIUM. FORGET ARMAGEDDON. FORET THE GIANT ASTEROID. On
September 1st (the product launch date) even the newest CD recording software
will be history. For all those that say that humor is not appropriate
in direct mail, think again. We well surpassed all projections with this
mailing. Done in conjunction with Beasley
Direct Marketing.
