Tim Milne’s Matter Box is a new Direct Mail device. Boxes full of various company's promotional items, are destined to start landing on the doormats of young affluent professionals from Jan08.
But for me, it seems to miss the whole point of Direct Marketing. The power of DM is unleashed only when high quality data is used to identify and target individuals at the right time with a relevant message. When you deliver timely messages in a creative and focused way, you can stimulate a response and ultimately build relationships with your customers. It’s a highly personal, targeted and measurable medium. It’s not Advertising. It’s not Design. It’s Direct Marketing.
Asking design consultancies to approach their clients with quirky ideas for the box is putting the cart before horse. Strategy, planning and coming up with the ‘big idea’ must be put first. Only then can the mechanism be developed, designed to deliver the message in a creative and original way.
If the Matter Box can grow and develop a high quality database, and each individual box can be completely personalised, delivering targeted messages (brand and tactical) in an innovative way, then you have a very effective and lucrative channel. But if it just ends up being a box filled with useless gimmicks sent out on mass, then it’s hard to see the value to the recipient, or the more importantly the client.
Peter O'Flynn is Creative Director of Marketing Team Direct the Integrated Marketing Agency that knows it’s stuff.
1 comment:
I'm flattered to see Matter discussed before it's even left the door. Thank you.
You're right that it misses the point of direct marketing; it's supposed to. Matter isn't a direct channel. How can it be? It's not direct. There's a process of intervention that steps in between the client and the consumer.
It's the direct nature of DM that's the source of so much of it being junk–direct mailers are free to send anything they like to consumers, and so they do. And since they're only interested in the specific (usually measurable) responses they're looking for, they disregard any other responses that will include the emotional component that supports brands.
Matter is the opposite. It's not direct, it's curated. It sets out to stimulate a more three-dimensional series of responses and is thus 'interested' in what everyone of its recipients–and not just a small percentage–think.
It's not a replacement for anything–least of all DM–it's intended to be a new channel that compliments more established media like TV, press, online etc.
Thanks for the mention.
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