• Royal Mail needs to boost awareness and sales of Smilers
• It targets busy mums in the run up to Christmas
• Dancing cat TV ad helps deliver impressive response

The challenge

Smilers are a great product: a special stamp that allows consumers to add a personal touch to their post by combining a Royal Mail stamp with an image of their own.

However, the product was little known. Smilers initially launched in 2001 but was unsupported by marketing until 2007. In 2008, the challenge was to raise awareness and drive sales to meet the business objectives. 

Analysis of purchase patterns revealed that Christmas was a key period for Smilers and also that women were key users of the service. However, this meant competing with other brands at the busiest time of the year.

The TV solution

TGI studies revealed that 3.4m women – most of them busy mums – have uploaded and shared photos online in the last 12 months. Women are 20% more likely to do this than men and also more likely to send Christmas cards. These consumers are heavy consumers of daytime TV, especially GMTV and ITV.

TV had already been seen to have a strong effect as some previous editorial coverage had delivered an impressive sales boost. A 60-second feature on Lorraine Kelly Today had caused sales to rise by more than 500% for two weeks.

The activity kicked off on November 10 to ensure that orders were received by the December 5 cut off for pre-Xmas delivery and onward postage. It was important to have as many TVRs over as short a period as possible in order to capitalise on sales pre-Christmas

The ad showed a man trying to entice his cat to do something exciting so he can take a picture, before the animal gets up from the sofa and starts disco dancing.

The execution ends with an image of the dancing feline on a stamp and the message “Put Your Own Stamp on It”. The creative was also distributed online.

Heavy use of daytime TV, concentrated over a two-week period was backed up by investment in search to capture the interest the TV would generate. TV ads targeted busy mums between 6.30am and 1.30pm, with GMTV and other terrestrial channels upweighted to drive mass awareness and target efficiently while multichannel was used to increase the frequency of the campaign.

Results

TV drove coverage very quickly reaching 47% of all housewives over just 2 weeks in November. This totalled 12.2m people. Frequency was also high with 16% seeing the ad four or more times.

Unprompted awareness rose from 14% to 44% among those who had seen the TV ad. The ad was also watched more than 170,000 times online, featuring on YouTube’s most watched page.

Smilers branded searches increased 80% year on year with more than 10,500 consumers visiting from PPC.