A children’s charity uses the tactile power of direct marketing to move donors

By: Lou Bortone

Imagine arriving at your desk one day and finding a plain white envelope sitting in your inbox. The nondescript piece of mail is devoid of any identifying labels other than some simple text instructing you to fold the envelope in half. You’re curious, so you fold the envelope and feel a little snap. Naturally, you open the envelope, only to discover that you’ve just broken a pencil in two. A note inside reads: “That’s how easy it is to break a child’s arm.”

The note in the envelope with the now-shattered pencil goes on to tell the heartbreaking story of Jeremy, a little boy who had his arm broken by his father not once, but on six different occasions. Jeremy was just 5 years old when his abusive father first broke the boy’s bone using no more force than what it took to snap that pencil.

If you’re surprised and shocked by this powerful message, that’s exactly the response that the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) was hoping for. As a nonprofit child abuse-prevention organization in the U.K. competing against dozens of other British charities for attention and donations, the NSPCC needed a unique and compelling way to emerge from the clutter and reverse the organization’s falling response rates.

The NSPCC mail piece, created by WWAV Rapp Collins in London, was designed to engage the senses and take advantage of the tactile power of direct marketing. “The campaign targeted people at work, where people are unfamiliar with receiving fundraising appeals,” explains Barney Cockerell, creative director at WWAV Rapp Collins, “so the communication had to cut through. We had to stop people in their tracks and make them act.

“Only once recipients opened the envelope and read the contents would they know that they had just experienced how shockingly easy it is to break a child’s arm,” recounts Cockerell. “We knew that we had to provide an experience that directly connected them with the cause, so we took full advantage of the three dimensions and five senses that we have to play with in direct mail communications.”

The day after receiving their “pencil packs,” more than 300 office workers in Britain who had received the initial message got a follow up e-mail from the NSPCC. The e-mail reminder encouraged automatic payroll deductions and promised matching funds from the employer.

Despite the shocking nature of the pencil pack device, there were no complaints or reports of recipients being offended. “There’s a fine line between shocking people and offending them,” according to WWAV Rapp Collins Group Communications Director Robert Mayes. “Having worked on NSPCC and many other charities for the best part of 27 years, we have a finely tuned sense of where that line is and how to get close to the edge without crossing it.” Mayes also says that the unmarked envelopes didn’t alarm anyone, even in this more vigilant age of terrorism concerns.

In fact, after the emotionally charged pencil pack campaign, employee payroll giving jumped from 2 percent to 10 percent, with an average monthly gift of 10 pounds sterling, or about 20 U.S. dollars. Even better for the NSPCC, the employers involved doubled that figure.

The campaign garnered a DMA ECHO Gold Award in 2007, but more important, the NSPCC’s pencil pack generated an impressive response rate of 6.8 percent. “This campaign takes the idea of emotional engagement to a new level,” Cockerell says of the success. The DMA calls the piece “brave, original and unique.”

“Every time someone breaks the pencil and reads the headline, they have an immediate and visceral emotional reaction,” reports Cockerell. “Which is exactly what makes people give to charity.”