AMONG THE MORE interesting first place winners at the 21st Annual John Caples International Awards were Miller/Huber Relationship Marketing’s catalog for Levi Strauss & Co. and GG Creative Inc.’s subscription package for Mad magazine. Both Mad and Levi’s have been around for many years and are using direct response to recapture lost markets.
Levi’s Scott Waltz, senior vice president and director of client services at Miller/Huber, San Francisco, explains the background to Levi’s first catalog. The idea, he says, was to help “reinvigorate” the brand with “echo boomers.” Compounding the problem of having “lost relevance with that new consumer group,” was that Levi’s distribution did not support “the tremendous variety of fashion-forward items.”
The marketing solution to establish brand relevance, Waltz says, is to create a concept that is more edgy, more consistent with what people are about. What Miller/Huber came up with was the contents of people’s pockets.
And indeed, that’s what recipients of the catalog got. The front cover features an “X-ray” of the right-hand front pockets of a pair of 501s. The pockets’ contents include keys, change, a pocketknife, and, in the small watch pocket, what appears to be a condom.
A typical double-page spread features a full-page bleed with a model wearing Levi’s and the facing page divided between product shots and a picture of what’s in the model’s pockets. Keys and loose change are the most common items, but lip balm, dog biscuits, hairpins, and flashlights also turn up, and pockets are turned inside out.
“It was lifestyle-based,” Waltz says. “We developed concepts that were not the typical ‘spring fling,'” he added, referring to the usual fashion or clothing catalog theme of seasonal clothing.
By focusing on pockets, it places Levi’s as “individual style in action” and “helps people connect a little more personally” with the product.
“We worked hard to have a range of personality types, so people could see themselves or their friends in the folks represented.”
The Caples judges found the theme made the catalog a real page-turner. We think this idea is too good to waste on the young.
The creative director was Paul Huber; the copywriter, Alexandra Tyler; and the art directors, Rich Burns and Don Lucchesi.
Mad While Levi’s is using direct response to (re)capture a young, soon-to-be-cool market, Mad magazine is using direct response to (re)capture an older, too-young-to-so-soon-be-uncool market.
Mad’s traditional audience is 10- to 12-year-old boys, but as Daniel Brown-Mad’s first subscription director-puts it, 12-year-olds don’t write checks. The subscription campaign targets baby boomers who are nostalgic for their real or imagined wayward youth.
We were never big fans of Mad (though we liked “Spy vs. Spy”), but we did find the package quite engaging. The copy perfectly apes the style of the “usual gang of idiots” up to their “usual low standards.” The result is a package that is as much a Mad parody of a subscription package as it is a real one.
“Get in touch with your Inner Idiot!” screams a headline on the envelope. Inside, the copy pitches “The magazine that made being antisocial socially acceptable” as being suitable for adult consumption, with such elements as “Mad is an institution. With artists and writers who should be in an institution” and a Mad fold-in that folds into a hand slipping the Mad business reply envelope into a mailbox.
However, we fell off a barstool laughing at the lift note:
Come on, this is a FREE offer! But we’re not going to push you into something if you don’t want to…Oh, just one thing. Phil Fibley of Staten Island didn’t reply and he was struck by lightning-while on the subway! Tom Brisbain didn’t reply either, and he was trampled by wild horses-in his apartment! Stanley Karpinsky of Grand Rapids was crushed to death by a falling safe-while boating! So what are we saying here? That if these people had accepted our free offer none of these terrible things would have happened to them? NO, WE ARE NOT SAYING THAT! Implying that? Maybe. Suggesting that? Definitely! But we’re not saying that! (Happy now, Legal Department??!!)
Grace Garguilo was the copywriter, art director and creative director.
Both are great direct response pieces.
I just wish I didn’t have the feeling that Levi’s catalog is the sort of thing Mad would have made fun of back when we all were young.
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