A clever mail campaign uses a series of packages to encourage prompt response from its targeted audience

By: Vicki Powers

Part of the success of any marketing campaign is making it easy for your prospective customers to respond to your message. Well, imagine receiving a cell phone with the sender’s phone number already programmed in. Responding doesn’t get much easier than that.

The JBG Companies, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate developer, had the pleasure of reaping the benefits of just such a campaign in 2007: Hoping to garner support for the construction of a 12-story office building in the District, the company targeted major commercial real estate brokers in the area with an elaborate multi-stage direct mail campaign that promoted the potential features and benefits of the building. The campaign culminated with the mailing of orange Motorola cell phones with the JBG number already encoded to the brokers, all of whom handle large-tenant leases.

The campaign, which JBG developed with Hirshorn-Zuckerman Design Group (HZDG), turned out to be a bigger hit than many anticipated, as it began drawing notice even from brokers who hadn’t been targeted by the effort. By the time it was over the building had won strong approval from the broker community. And the mail campaign, though elaborate, could be credited with having had significant influence.

“When you’re really trying to get someone’s attention, you need to work harder,” Karen Zuckerman, president at HZDG, says of the pricey effort. The building, designed by the London-based, world-renowned architectural firm Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, is expected to fetch some of the highest rents in the city. Moreover, its construction necessitates the demolition of an existing hotel with an enviable occupancy rate, all the more reason JBG felt compelled to woo big brokers.

With a series of sustainability features, the building is expected to promote environmental responsibility and energy efficiency. JBG officials expect the building to earn high praise from environmental activists and gatekeepers, and have repeatedly stressed their desire to minimize the ecological footprint of the construction. This nod to environmental awareness is important in Washington, D.C., according to HZDG, a reality that helped prompt a key message in the cell phone campaign: “Orange is the new green.”

“We needed to be sophisticated and smart since the building will have the highest rent in the city when it is ultimately built,” says Tamara Dowd, creative director at HZDG.

The campaign team believed that a series of unique “dimensional” objects featured in the mail campaign would be difficult to ignore. Brokers may not take a phone call, went the thinking, but if something arrives in their office, they probably couldn’t resist opening the box.