"Did you get my message?" How many times have you asked someone this in your own personal life? "I left you a message, did you get it?" Probably not. These days the influx of communication has us all struggling to sort through the “messages” coming in, from our inboxes, mailboxes, phones, eyes, ears.
I know in our industry we constantly try to figure out how to get people to answer survey invitations, or call to be recruited for a panel. While the application here might not be the most useful to a market research panel, the essence of it really solves our problem. Stop using the same channels and increasing the magnitude - more emails, brighter colors, louder ads. Really figure out WHO your target is. Not just their stats but who they are.
This agency, Rethink Communications, really went for it. They targeted cat owners. But guess what the key is to a cat owner’s heart? Their CAT! So they sent a direct mailer sprayed with catnip concentrate. Anyone who has a cat knows when he wants to grab something off the table he WILL get it. So that’s what they did. And then when I, the owner, go to scold my cat and see what he has grabbed, I see this flyer above all the rest. I just had a full experience with my most beloved creature (maybe after spouse and children, but only maybe), and it was all centered around a piece of marketing mail. Genius. See it all unfold here:
This begs the question, what else can be our target audience’s “cat”? We have to find that piece of them that they interact with on a primal level every day, and then they will surely get our message.
