I signed up for the Response Project a while ago. It’s a highly interactive direct marketing campaign from NewPage Corporation, a company that, not-so-coincidentally, makes paper for direct marketing. Cleverly disguised as a scientific Direct Marketing study, the Response Project lured me in with a simple call to action and a promise to provide me with useful information. I’m kind of outside their target market (I don’t buy direct marketing paper products) but I’m always curious about clever marketing campaigns. I also try these things out so I can find new stuff to show our employees and customers. The Response Project has been pretty interesting.
It started with a cool postcard that promised me SWAG (Aha! The true motivation is revealed!) and drove me to a website. On the site, which has NewPage branding in the corner but is clearly all about the Response Project, I played a kind of interactive “pick the colors and pictures that appeal to you the most” game. A couple of weeks later, I received mailings with response cards of different types - I was to pick some and mail them back. I then received a heavyweight T-shirt that said something cool like “Act Before You Think” (sadly, this is also the fight song for idiots who drive on Route 128 near Boston). I also received a tall poster of a woman wearing the same T-Shirt (well, probably not the same t-shirt - that would be unusually racy for a paper maker, in my experience.) The poster and T-shirt were the promised SWAG, fulfilled as promised and with no small degree of coolness due to the quality of the merchandise and the attractive and unusual packaging. So far, this program has raised my eyebrows more times than my coworker’s beamers.
There have been some follow-up mailings and emails. I received a selection of papers and later, a pack of cards loaded with DM information, packed in a cool box (I hand all these to Marketing who do something smart with them, I trust). Today I received another email. Each of the emails has had a nugget of information gleaned from the study. One spoke of how over 70% of the cards mailed back were on the thickest two coated papers - a sign that people are more likely to respond to thicker paper. Another mentioned that over 52% of the responses included comments on the cards that left space for comments, and that most were positive. This pointed out that if you ask people what they think, they will tell you, and that when they perform this ritual, they become more deeply engaged with your brand. Today’s email spoke of how bright colors tend to help your program stand out in the mail bag. (Ok, some of these are pretty obvious but it’s nice to have data behind it, even if that data came from a fairly biased source).
This study may be the work of someone who wants to sell you heavy coated paper, but it’s well-executed, loaded with tactile and interactive activities, and seems to be keeping the data honest. If the opportunity still exists to participate at the level I did, then I recommend it highly. I also recommend the T-shirt (the poster of the t-shirt… not so much).
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