Creative effectiveness in door drop - examples from 2019

Written by Mark Davies, Managing Director of Whistl and member of the Door Drop Hub and Print Council.

So when was the last time a doordrop made you laugh? I don’t think for a minute that doordrop is the only channel that suffers from a lack of humour – banner ads rarely raise a chuckle I find - but it is always refreshing when you come across a piece of advertising that can put a smile on your face.

This four page brochure is authentically Specsavers in its use of visual gags and puntastic copy and does require a second glance to fully get the joke. I admire the consistency in Specsavers’ creative output. Famously in-house before it became fashionable they have continually churned out some memorable campaigns and content – often targeting highly topical events with wit and panache in out of home or press executions that fit with the wider ‘Should have gone to Specsavers’ campaign.

This campaign is a variation on this theme for their hearcare division but shares a lot of the insights that the optical business has learned over the years in terms of format, content and framing. A key factor in the success of this channel for products like hearing aids that many people need but nobody wants and nobody wants to feel that other people know they need them is the lack of personal data. Targeted it surely is but everyone in your street will get it so you can reconcile yourself to your receipt of it without the uncomfortable thought that somebody, somewhere knows you are knocking on a bit! It is for this reason that we often see doordrops targeting specific lifestages can be more successful than targeted one to one communications like direct mail and email which in some cases can be too intrusive.