two nice direct mail pieces

Two unique direct mail campaigns have been brought to our attention recently.

Sears just released a campaign which appears to be a children's book.It's presented as a Storybook Reader for Families. Titled "The Mystery of Snowy Way," the book is unique in that the characters in the story are all wearing clothing available at Sears, and at the bottom of the page, readers get a description and pricing information for the featured products. Coupons are also included. This seems like a nice tactic. It's clearly a marketing piece - so it shouldn't come across as sneaky to recipients, but instead potentially becomes a sales vehicle with a secondary side benefit - a story to share with your kids.

Becky over at RMI Direct Marketing pointed us to the Gap direct mail campaign as another cool promotion. If you're on their list (don't worry, I'm not either), you received a thick booklet that pulled out all of the stops on print design and printing techniques. Iron ons, die cuts, special folds, decals, and just about every other print design trick they could muster up. All to promote change. It's almost as is if at some point in the brainstorm, someone said "what else could we add to the book, to drive up the printing expense?" Perhaps we should be utilizing that brainstorm technique. The end result was a very effective piece.