Direct Response Advertising Campaign

Background

Building product manufacturers typically promoted their products through costly brochures and product binders. Vertex Design Systems developed a new type of product catalog for them: an electronic CADalog on diskette.

Issue

To build the business, Vertex needed to not just introduce the catalogs to building product manufacturers, but to build pull-through by creating a demand for them among architects.

Solution

We developed a series of direct-response display ads that ran in architectural magazines. In reviewing the target publications, we found that virtually all the building product ads showed beauty shots of the products, buildings that used them, or both. Ads for architectural software showed someone sitting at a computer or the computer screen. We realized that more of the same would not call sufficient attention to a missionary product.

Something more original was called for. What would make readers stop and notice the ad? A totally incongruous image, was our answer. But that approach only works if you can convincingly tie the image to the message.

Product introduction display advertisement

The premiere ad, shown here, features a Chinese take-out container. The headline reads, "How to add three new spec sections and five installation details to your construction documents before lunch." These are the kinds of things, as the copy pointed out, that can mean late lunches and even later nights for architects.

The response coupon features "fortunes" with the manufacturer´s names and logos on them and several ways to respond. The ads were a huge success, rapidly generating a backlog of leads for the manufacturers. A number of them told us they were getting better quality leads from our CADalog ads than they were getting through their own marketing.

The follow-on ad featured a take-out pizza instead of the Chinese food container with the response information on a "guest check.

To make the most of the campaign, we produced direct mail pieces with the same visuals and the same message as the display ads. These mailing generated a response rate in excess of 3%.