Royal Mail gets adland to big up mail

Royal Mail has signed up senior adland figures to front its first major campaign for MarketReach – the business division – designed to promote how direct mail can contribute to advertising success.
The “Mailmen” campaign, a twist on the TV show Madmen, targets clients, media and creative agencies, as well as marketing decision-makers at the top 3,000 advertisers. It combines digital, press, outdoor, email and direct mail, of course.
Devised by Publicis Chemistry, it promotes MarketReach’s in-depth research programme, The Private Life of Mail, and flags up what the company calls “unprecedented insight into the role of mail in people’s homes, hearts and heads”.
A range of leading research partners were involved in the creation of study – hailed by the DMA as “essential reading for everyone in the industry” – including BrandScience, Media Native, Decode Marketing, Neuro-Insight, Peter Field, Quadrangle and Trinity McQueen.
But it is to adland – which coined the term “shit that folds” – that the campaign turns for endorsement, with Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Group worldwide chief executive Robert Senior, MediaCom CEO Karen Blackett, Poke founder Nik Roope, The Sun’s sales and marketing director David Robinson, and former M&C Saatchi executive creative director Elspeth Lynn all extolling the virtues of direct mail.
It even has a tongue in cheek element, with Senior declaring: “Charming. Persuasive. Motivating. And for once I’m not talking about myself.”
Other executions feature Blackett stating: “After 20 years planning TV I’ve discovered a new channel,” while Lynn – who left M&C this week after a reshuffle, drools: “A great idea can come from anywhere including through the letterbox.”
The direct mail initiative is being posted to around 14,000 marketers and agencies and contains key findings from the research that make the case for mail as an essential part of any campaign. The full research report can be downloaded from www.mailmen.co.uk.
The move is part of MarketReach managing director Jonathan Harman’s strategy to get agencies as well as clients to embrace direct mail; he even claims Royal Mail is now the third largest media owner in the UK, after Google and ITV. He said: “In today’s rapidly transforming media landscape, brands and consumers are communicating in more diverse ways than ever. Over the last 18 months, we have conducted a series of research projects to understand exactly what that means for consumers and what it means for advertisers. It is an unprecedented look at what happens to mail when it enters the home which is why we have called it, The Private Life of Mail.”
Publicis Chemistry chief executive Mike Welsh added: “Mail has fallen out of fashion but the digital revolution has created a new and vital role for the medium. Eighteen months of research have proved that consumers engage and value mail more than ever – and this has given us a fantastic story to provoke a re-appraisal.”

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