Chris Newman has earned multiple awards for his work on behalf of several brands. But it’s the 28-year-old advertising maverick’s fiendishly clever array of mail campaigns for Sprint Nextel that has the direct world buzzing.

While many of his Gen-Y peers focus almost exclusively on the Internet, Newman, a senior art director at Euro RSCG Chicago, has made marketing headlines by applying Web-inspired dynamics to that tried and true response-getter — direct mail.

He’s won several honors, including a 2010 Emerging Leader Award from the Chicago Direct Marketing Association and several AMBIT Awards from the Kansas City Direct Marketing Association. The Chicago Sun-Times hailed Newman as “a man on a mission … to dispel the misconception that direct mail pieces are dull.”

“I always try to create direct mail pieces that will get people to want to interact with them,” Newman says. “Maybe it’s because I’m so used to having the Internet. It’s about taking that online interactive experience and bringing it into a direct mail/print form.”

What inspires Newman
Hailing from Sioux City, Iowa, Newman expressed his creativity from a young age, exploring drama, photography, art, music, choreography and even politics (he was student body president in high school). Those early experiences serve him well in his current job.

“Through acting and other artistic experiences, I learned how to put myself in the mindset of others,” Newman says. “When you’re acting, you really have to think, Who is this person and what would be relevant to them? One part about marketing and advertising is that you’re marketing to a different audience every day, whether you’re targeting mobile moms, college students or a boomer audience. Art is a great way to step outside of yourself and be someone else.”

Direct mail affords him the chances to unleash some powerful artistic impulses. “I love it when I get these [direct mail] assignments,” Newman says. “The challenge is always great … but the sky’s the limit when it comes to conveying something.”

That sort of thinking has led him to view the world as his own personal petri dish, where he can collect, cultivate and grow ideas. “I draw inspiration from everything,” he says. “If it’s Saturday and I’m out in the city and I see something, I think, ‘Oh, that’s really cool — I should keep that in the back of my mind.’ I’ll tear things out of magazines. If I see cool products or tchotchkes at trade shows or auto shows, I’m always trying to think how I can integrate something like that into what I’m doing.”

But as whimsical as his pieces may seem, Newman quickly points out, “Strategy is at the center of all my ideas: Who are you talking to? What are you trying to say? How can you best communicate your message in a way that’s relevant to people? How can you make the consumer understand it in a way that’s engaging for them? You look for an idea that has ‘legs.’”

Another aspect of Newman’s approach is a creative philosophy he calls Responsible Design. “It’s just being really responsible with where you place things — really thinking about where the headline is, where the images are, where the product and the price points are,” he says. “It means that everything has a place, a purpose and a reason for being there.”

How he puts philosophy into action
That approach has led Newman to churn out some of the best recent work in the business.

For instance, as part of a marketing push for Sprint’s Wireline Convergence Wireless Integration system, which integrates consumers’ personal smartphones with their Private Branch Exchange business lines, Newman took full advantage of mail’s tactile power by devising a B-to-B direct mailer that included a jar of peanut butter and jar of jelly.

“We came up with the concept of two things that are completely separate but really work together as a whole,” Newman says. “Knowing that we needed a high-impact DM, we asked, ‘What’s the ultimate combination of two things?’ That’s how we came up with peanut butter and jelly.”

The campaign — which also included an offer for a gift card for pricey steaks — exceeded the goal by more than 300 percent. “Our client told us that the Sprint national account managers loved the concept so much that when they were scheduled to go to appointments, they were actually bringing loaves of bread to go with the peanut butter and jelly,” Newman laughs.

Not long after that, Newman put together a hit B-to-C mail campaign for Sprint’s Handset Upgrade Optimizer, a portfolio of new, feature-intensive devices. Newman’s job: Entice existing Sprint customers to renew their contracts by informing them about the company’s new, feature-heavy phones.

He created a foldout mailer that spotlighted the array of new Sprint phones and carried the theme “One. Two. Three. More.” Measuring 6 inches by 9 inches when shut, and 12 inches by 18 inches when fully opened, each page of the mailer featured smartphone screen shots highlighting a certain PDA feature. The introductory page is devoted to texting (“One.”), another to the web (“Two.”), another dedicated to e-mail (“Three.”). A final page details the full capabilities of the entire Sprint handset series (“More.”). “That was the idea when I was designing it — to have it continuously open, and get bigger and bigger, so that the last reveal of the three phones feels exciting,” says Newman.

More than 150,000 pieces were mailed July 14, 2009, with an initial intended run of three months. But when the response rate topped 10 percent, the Kansas-based company extended the mailer’s run for two additional business quarters before refreshing the format in 2010.

Newman says the campaign, which included versions for Baby Boomers and Millennial generation users, allowed him to explore how technological breakthroughs are further boosting the versatility of mail.

“The handset upgrade piece was a great way for me to learn how I can take advantage of all today’s new technologies and printing techniques — and how we can customize and tailor a piece toward specific customers,” he says.

Turning direct mail work into play
Many of Newman’s direct mailers veritably scream, “Play with me.” Take his award-winning 2009 mailer, “Tackle Everything Faster,” a B-to-B Sprint project that gives fresh meaning to the phrase “reeling ’em in.” The campaign was engineered to entice primary decision makers at vertical businesses. Devising a tackle box that he dubbed a “solutions tool box,” Newman placed his enticing teaser message clearly on the outside of the box, cautioning recipients, “Don’t let this one get away.”

Inside the box, recipients are presented with fishing supplies, including lures, fishing wire, bobbers, sun block and more. Also included is a brochure promoting Sprint’s work-grade communications and a business card for a Sprint sales representative. Sprint produced more than 500 boxes for the campaign, with more than 5 percent of recipients rising to the bait.

Then there’s Newman’s 2008 back-to-school Sprint mailer, “Dissection.” It allowed more than 600,000 college student recipients to virtually dissect a frog by tearing open a center vertical perforation revealing a card detailing Sprint’s latest phone components.

Both pieces underscore for Newman the unique sensuality of direct mail. “What makes direct mail so appealing is finding that you can interact with the piece,” he says. “Since direct mail is tactile, the goal for me is to have people open it up and examine it. There’s something powerful about being able to hold something in your hand and explore it on your own, whether it’s peeling something back, or scratch ’n sniff, unique stickers or different print techniques. It’s definitely a ‘real’ experience, as opposed to a virtual experience.”

Which isn’t to say he doesn’t know how to leverage virtual experiences with mail. Consider the B-to-B mailer he designed for Sprint Mobile Broadband: It placed recipients into virtual, lifelike working environments including a coffee shop and a diner — a creative device Newman used to show that consumers could transform any setting into an office using the service. More than 10 percent of recipients responded, while Newman nabbed two Tempo Awards for the project.

Hitting the target with direct
Of course, Newman acknowledges that he learns something new with every project. Perhaps the biggest lesson of all? Newman’s award-winning work has cemented his faith in the bull’s-eye impact of direct mail.

“One thing I really like about direct is that you can reach a specific audience with a specific message,” he says. “You’re focusing your message directly toward a person who has a higher propensity to want to respond to your offer. It’s great that you can really target an audience like that.”