2015 Gold Best Business to Business Campaign

Royal Mail was the wrong spokesman to champion its own medium, so it removed its logo from the campaign. The team needed independent confirmation, and conducted 18 months of research into mail effectiveness and consumer behaviour. They assembled a group of famous advertising and marketing people to endorse the channel, many were the last people in the world anyone would expect to be saying good things about mail.

The key message, supported by The Private Life of Mail whitepaper, was that mail is not only a valued and effective medium in the eyes of consumers, but plays a huge role in a multi-channel world – lending significant uplift to the success of any aligned digital channels as well as performing as a medium in its own right.

With a compelling new story together with new storytellers, the campaign could become a real industry movement.

The big creative shift was to brand this movement Mailmen rather than Royal Mail, with a confident tone and Royal Mail behaving like a 21st century media owner. Mailmen talked intelligently and knowingly, used industry jokes wisely and never criticised other channels.

The art direction felt different, too, with a nod to Mad Men, powerful black and white portraiture and bold colours to give a slick, strong, contemporary feel.

The media strategy avoided relying on its own medium, instead breaking the campaign in highly targeted OOH and both online and offline marketing press. Advertising was the entry point but direct and event- driven marketing delivered the compelling facts and figures unearthed by research. Mail was part of the mix, but simple formats were chosen to keep the channel accessible. Filmic content brought research and individual Mailmen to life on mailmen.co.uk, while social media and PR helped generate dialogue.

By updating the story and the storytellers, the campaign broke down negative perceptions of advertising mail, made the medium acceptable again and ultimately helped drive a 5% increase in UK mail volumes – the best mail industry performance in Europe.

53% of agencies said the campaign made them think differently about mail, backed by a 30% increase in advertisers saying they were likely to use mail in the next 12 months.

Overall recognition for the campaign was more than three times higher than the average for B2B, while 71% of advertisers said it was surprising to see this kind of campaign from Royal Mail.

The campaign generated more than 22,500 unique visitors to the campaign site – equivalent to a 56% engagement rate from the 40,000 target audience.