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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So, if you’re an advertiser, how do you stand out? In the case of Hodgson/Meyers client CSG Systems. Inc. – a customer interaction management solution company – the answer was to come out fighting. Or at least to wear boxing gloves.

How to stand out in the direct mail crowd

In touching more than half of all U.S. households, CSG helps companies such as Comcast, DISH and Time Warner with billing and customer interaction solutions. When the time came to introduce a new product offering, CSG wanted to reach approximately 100 key decision makers in the cable and satellite TV industry.

With such a narrow, targeted audience, a direct mail approach seemed the most appropriate vehicle. However, these influential executives are also the same targets of most every other technology company as well. Thus, the challenge became to create marketing materials that would not immediately be placed in the round file, under W for wastebasket.

As the marketing agency for CSG, we needed to think big and think outside the box. In this case, thinking big meant size. And thinking outside the box had to do with thinking about what went inside the box.

Which brings us back to boxing gloves.

Adapt the mail strategy to the marketing strategy

Cable and satellite marketing managers face the never-ending problem of customer churn, people who leave one provider for another. CSG has a way to help providers eliminate churn with a better customer management solution. We recommended sending life-size professional boxing gloves along with product information to the target audience, allowing CSG to figuratively and literally give marketing executives the tools to effectively fight churn.

The sheer size of the direct mail piece (7.5” x 10.5” x 12.5”) received immediate attention. Inside a handsome box, copy and layout framed a personalized message as if announcing a heavyweight championship bout.

Box copy and Everlast boxing gloves were customized with each individual recipient’s name. These decision makers were encouraged to “K.O. churn with CSG customer intelligence solutions.” In so doing, they’d be able to build strong customer relationships, retain subscribers more effectively and enhance the value of each customer interaction.

Big package. Big Idea. In short, a real knockout!

(Customized boxes for the CSG mailer were provided by MasterCraft.)