Articles
Teaser and Payoff: the dynamic duo of killer creative
By Carol Worthington Levy
I love to be teased in the mail. Unlike many of our customers, I really like getting direct mail and look forward to opening it and seeing how it makes me feel, what it makes me covet and what new product it introduces me to. But lately I’ve noticed that so much that arrives in my mailbox has ‘who cares?’ teasers.
These are the ones that tell me for the millionth time that there is a special invitation enclosed: RSVP….but they are arriving by standard mail rather than first class mail! How special could it be? Another ‘who cares’ would include ‘Your membership is about to expire’ messages when it’s a membership or subscription that I never asked for to begin with. Ho, Hum! Or worse, teasers that are so far off-base demographically or psychographically that they insult me, make assumptions about me, or get too personal.
The kind of teaser I don’t see too often (and the kind that is most often screwed up somehow through bad writing or marketing) is the one that knocks me out of my ‘end of the day complecency’. These are the ones that say something out of the ordinary, and in an unpredictable way.
It’s hard to do it really well. We know the teaser has been screwed up when there is a big tease and you find yourself looking for the payoff inside, and are let down. Ken Schneider pointed one out a few issues ago when he noticed a teaser announcing a free enclosure that wasn’t in fact there. Not paying off a teaser is the fastest way to the trash bin, but even worse than just being tossed, your prospect is now let down by you… a negative reaction instead of a neutral disinterest! (This is to be staunchly avoided!)
I think about Bill Jayme when I consider some of the best killer creative teasers of all time… things like his ‘Psychology Today’ teaser asking if you close the bathroom door if nobody’s home, and so on. Knocks me out of my jaded state and into action to open the envelope. The industry sure misses Bill Jayme.
I wish I’d received more of those interesting and intriguing kinds of mail in my mailbox this past year. It’s anyone’s guess as to why ideas like this don’t surface in my mailbox – whether they’re not being presented, or they’re not presented with a good enough payoff to get approved…OR if they’re being presented and knocked out of the race by a frightened client or an account team who doesn’t know how to sell a big idea. And big ideas are the ones that get the biggest flops…or the biggest breakthroughs. That’s why we test, isn’t it?
There are those who say that this kind of big crazy teaser doesn’t work, but I can’t agree based on my experience. It’s not always appropriate, but if you can find a reason, an intelligent creative solution that utilizes a killer teaser that’s both marketing-driven and assertive, it can yield fabulous results.
Some of my favorite teasers this past few years are from projects I’ve been a partner in, and can attest to the success of these killer creative teasers…all with a solid payoff.
“The Big Gripper” – the outside teaser screams “Inside: A really BIG REASON to test drive the 1999 Trooper at your Isuzu Dealer”. The package is big, really big. The payoff is big too, in more ways than one. First, they find a big red rubber gripper that illustrates Torque on Demand, an Isuzu trademarked phrase and feature that kicks in for better traction when you need it, and not before…just like a rubber jar opener works when you use it to open a lid. The other big gift is an oversized road atlas, free when they test drive the Isuzu Trooper. Response was in the double digits to a database of soft leads. Response was followed by quick and measurable conversion to sale, to the tune of nearly 30% conversion. A really big package might have gotten opened without that teaser, but the follow through and the teaser so well-qualified the recipient that it turned into more than gadgetry… it became solid showmanship that paid off handsomely with sales.
The Elvis Package: This 9 x 12 package to generate leads for a Web Portal site presented the outrageous puzzle: “What do you get when you cross Elvis, Einstein, Godzilla, Influenza and Super Glue?” We give them another hint on the back when we tell them that we’ll share with them how to give their web site the pull of Elvis, the Presence of Godzilla, the Smarts of Einstein, the Viralness of this year’s flu and the Stickiness of Super Glue, FREE.
I’m the first to admit that there are markets that might find this bizarre and not worth opening, but OUR market was a hip web community who shuns traditional direct mail treatments. In presenting our unique selling proposition in such an unusual way as a teaser, we grabbed them to the tune of nearly 5% response to cold lists. The gift if they qualified (it was clear what they needed to do to qualify for the gift) was a CD of Elvis hits… another ‘retro’ touch for this ‘I’m too hip’ audience.
This package brings up two issues:
First, some intimate knowledge – not just the demographics, but truly the psychographics of the audience – is necessary to make this work well. I can’t believe how many companies send out mailings without having done at least some initial eResearch or telephone research to segments of their market. Sometimes they think they’ll get enough answers with focus groups, but the most accurate way to get to know your markets intimately (and therefore get better information to feed the creative team) is through research that is private and candid.
Second, I’m convinced that this kind of teaser can only be at its very best when brainstormed with a creative team, a writer and art director working together to find multiple solutions. For packages like these we’ll spend some hours kicking around ideas, some conservative and some pretty crazy. We hone and argue in a friendly way, bringing up the prospect’s fantasy of the best that life can be if they have this product, and so on.
If we present multiple ideas to the client, we’re not showing anything we wouldn’t have complete confidence in and can justify all approaches, showing their payoff. We can’t expect our client to notice if we screw up the payoff, we police ourselves and we invite the client to comment about all directions, encourage them to voice all concerns.
With this Elvis package, the other ideas we showed were solid and we liked them. But the Elvis packge, the one we expected them to turn down in all honesty, was the one that they chose and we’re convinced it gave them a better payoff than the others would have. The passion was there and so was the good old fashioned direct marketing strategy.
Forget the Giant Asteroid: This software upgrade package actually made fun of the impending panic from the new millennium (doesn’t’ that seem like an eternity ago now?) by teasing with “Forget the Millennium! Forget Armageddon! Forget the Giant Asteroid! On September 1st even the newest CD recording software will be HISTORY!”
When the upgrade is a minor one, sometimes it’s hard to get someone’s attention – particularly if they are so thrilled with the last version that they’re unlikely to notice anything missing. Sometimes a killer teaser can help make up for a less-than-outrageous offering inside. But we paid off with the upgrades that were available and while not overselling them, we provided a solid view of why their old software would soon be “history”. And the upgrades showed up in numbers that beat all projections.
Tomato Paste: This B2B package to generate leads to the food service industry for Isuzu trucks was going to a certified non-responsive and jaded audience. To break past the clutter, a box was simply not enough. We used the information we had access to, to target the kind of load that would be carried inside the back of one of these trucks, which was very size-appropriate for this market…using the headline “500 Gallons of Tomato Paste Enclosed.” Whaaaa??? This package paid off inside by admitting, “Okay, so we exaggerated a little about the 500 gallons of tomato paste.’ And we enclosed ONE small can. Just enough to get the prospect engaged. The inserts paid off the size and capability to show that in fact that 500 gallons would fit nicely along with a plethora of other packaged food goods. The completion of the payoff can be seen on the reply form asking if they were ‘Hungry for information about the Isuzu Trucks’… the letter, too, played with them just enough to pay off, but not so much as to be pedantic.
That’s another point about the killer teaser and the payoff… the writer has to be good, really good. Good enough to know how much to play it, how to provide a clean payoff, and then how to get outta there and into the ‘sell’. This is not for the fainthearted or the lazy writer – it takes skill, imagination and self-control. Not something I see a lot of in my mailbox these days.
The Case for Peoplesoft: on the outside of this box features the bold headline: “Inside: a case that could change the future of eBusiness.” A pretty bold claim on the front of an intriguing pinstriped box that fits right into this high-end decision maker and influencer’s mindset.
The payoff is a double hit – the gift , a mini Halliburton case inside the box which is to hold their business cards in the future if they choose…and a case presented on a tiny CD inside the case. The small letter completes the payoff and the offer, a book about eBusiness, made the package a roaring success which showed direct payoff in both leads generated and completed contracts… and it came out of a tease that said more than just the ordinary ‘Free gift inside’…which may have been more of the same old thing to this heavily-gifted crowd in the upper echelon of a company.