In an admittedly non-projectable examination of one household mailbox, “research” shows that, with five pieces of direct mail a day, the average homeowner receives more than 1,500 items of, for the most part, unrequested mail a year.

With so many letters and catalogs destined for the recycling bin, woe to the direct mail that does not immediately capture the reader’s attention. At Hodgson/Meyers, we’ve found that sometimes the best way to put the wow in your DM is to put the meow in your DM.

Enter the Fat Cat.

Illustrating the problem: Here kitty kitty

With service in 16 states in the southeast, Windstream Communications provides phone and Internet packages to business and residential markets. On the consumer side, Windstream often found itself up against more established, yet more expensive cable providers. To help portray those companies as being more costly, we represented them collectively as, you guessed it, the Fat Cat.

A casting call was put out for filled-out felines to…actually PhotoShop magic was responsible for creating the centerpiece character. Gold eyes gleaming and pleasantly plump, the animal quickly caught the fancy of H/M employees, earning such endearments as Phat C, Heavy C and Puff Catty. Not only did Fat Cat stand out as illustrated, he perfectly illustrated how cable companies profit from charging their customers higher prices.

Windstream vs. Cable TV: A tail of five kitties
Originally scheduled to star in a single direct mailing, the Fat Cat so resonated with Windstream—and its customers—that the client requested a series of five pieces to showcase the savings Windstream offered over its competition.

With Fat Cat soaking in a tub of money, one mailer featured the headline: Are you getting soaked by those Fat Cats at your cable company? Another featured the Cat sporting a diamond-encrusted gold dollar sign collar (think of it as feline bling) in front of a private jet with the headline, Is your cable company getting fat off you?

Fat results
Windstream notes that the first Fat Cat mailing pulled 55% more responses than their average pieces. Which shows that Puff Catty was the purr-fect DM solution.

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