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The case for creativity

The NRMA’s Motoring and Services division was becoming increasingly alarmed by member attrition rates due to increased competition in the roadside assistance space. Car manufacturers were now offering free roadside assist with new vehicle purchases and cheaper roadside assist players were entering the market. Even my local mechanic was offering free roadside assist for a year with every service.

With this in mind the NRMA wanted to launch a direct marketing campaign that would bring those lost members back into the fold.

The NRMA, our client, had a list of 40,000 people that had let their membership lapse by at least 3 months or more (a nice way of saying they weren’t interested in joining up again).

The offer was to give lapsed members a free Club Care Membership for 12 months with all the benefits – but not including roadside assistance. The idea was that lapsed members would be more inclined to renew to full membership after enjoying the benefits of the ‘Show your card and Save’ program free for 12 months.

A note: The NRMA ‘Show your card and Save’ program gives members access to great third party discounts throughout Australia, on anything from mobile phones to Sea World passes.

In the previous year, the NRMA had mailed out a pack with the exact same offer. Take up on the offer, from what we’ll now call the ‘control’ mail pack, was only just above 2% so our task was obviously to beat this.

As usual we came up with three DL self-sealer concepts to show the client, and as usual, pushed for the one we thought would be most engaging. The client bought it.

Headline on the first half of the cover: ‘Free things we wouldn’t recommend’ Image: Elderly couple gardening naked
Sub headline underneath picture: ‘A spot of naked gardening on the weekend’

Headline on the second half of the cover: ‘Free things we would recommend’ Image: NRMA membership card.
Sub headline underneath picture: ‘Getting yourself a FREE Club Care Membership’

I can hear you thinking, “That concept’s a little out there… you’ve got free stuff to give away – just tell ’em its FREE!!”

In the immortal words of Allan ‘Jo’ Morris (co-founder of Mojo), “If you’re doing an ad for free beer, say FREE BEER!” Apologies to Jo. The control pack’s text only execution with no visuals had screamed FREE, but had only garnered a 2% response. Instead, we had tackled this ‘FREE stuff’ brief with a touch of humour we felt would get our audience’s attention.

Now the debate over whether creativity sells in advertising has raged since Bill Bernbach (founder of DDB) and Paul Rand first put a postage stamp size shot of a Volkswagen Beetle in the middle of a newspaper advertisement with the headline ‘Think small’ underneath. The body copy went on to explain that this small car has very small running costs. This was an controversial ad for its time, considering most car ads in the 60’s featured pictures of enormous winged cars surrounded by happy smiling families or racy looking women. But the ad worked, and Beetle sales took off.

With the success of the Beetle campaign a seismic shift in thinking had occurred that was to change advertising forever. Now ad agencies pursued more creative ways to connect emotionally with an audience. As Bill Bernbach famously said, “Advertising is fundamentally persuasion, and persuasion is not a science, but an art.”

Stephan Vogel, Ogilvy & Mather Germanyʼs chief creative officer, parrots the views of many (if not all) ad agencies, “Nothing is more efficient than creative advertising. Creative advertising is more memorable, longer lasting, works with less media spending, and builds a fan community…faster.”

I’m not about to suggest our humble mailer deserves a place in the pantheon of advertising legend, but I’ve got a point brewing.

One afternoon our Account Director waved us over. He had the NRMA client on the phone. The client announced with intermittent giggling, the mailer had had a response rate of 11% – the client was not a known giggler. We were a little surprised too, but as creatives do, soon accepted the fantastic response rate as vindication of our genius. A response rate of 2% was good, 5% excellent, 11% through the roof.

Score board:
Control Pack 2%      Creative Pack 11%

Something had worked. It seems we had tickled our audience’s funny bone and captured their attention. Had the control pack, a drier text only execution with no concept or visuals devalued the free membership offer?

Without research focus groups munching finger buns over cups of tea we will never know
definitively – but results speak for themselves.