Sales reps are wont to promise media buyers they’ll circle the earth to help meet their clients’ needs, but who actually lives up to that promise?
Answer: New Zealand’s TV2.
The station had an upcoming airing of the classic “Around the World in 80 Days” movie, and it was anxious to book more ad business for its Saturday night movies. To get media buyers' attention, it sent out a rate card but it sent it in a round-about way, around the world.
“It took 24 days, passing through five continents, nine countries and 11 cities before it landed in the hands of media buyers,” says Tim Howman, art director on the project for Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, which came up with the idea and executed it.
The aim, of course, was to grab the attention of media buyers inundated by pitches of one sort or another throughout their day.
It did that. How could it not have?
What arrived on buyers' desks was a great bulky envelope that when opened revealed another envelope inside, and inside that yet another envelope and then still another and another, each with different stamp.
The letters had been sent from New Zealand to Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Lausanne, Amsterdam, London, New York, San Francisco and finally back to media buyers in Auckland and Wellington.
The result: “TV2’s Saturday night movie slot was booked out for the next six months,” Howman says, generating $5 million in business for the network.
But there were some hitches, he notes.
"The envelopes got lost in translation going through Tokyo, ripped apart by customs in Lausanne, and by the time we got them to New York people were having a hard time finding envelopes big enough to fit."
