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What would you do if a full-size, rock star-worthy guitar landed on your desk with the daily mail? Besides busting out with the guitar riff for "Sweet Child O' Mine," you'd probably inspect the guitar to see who was cool enough to send it. This is exactly what 350 head honchos in Chicago did when they received a guitar from First Midwest Bank. Well, except for the Guns N' Roses riff - the guitars didn't have strings.
This was the market strategy of Janet Dow, MAS, Geiger (UPIC: geiger) sales partner and mastermind behind First Midwest Bank's guitar campaign. Her colleague, Ed Johnson, MAS, says sending the acoustic guitars without strings played upon a no-strings-attached idea. Plus, Johnson explains, "First Midwest Bank wanted to talk about superior performance and a business's six core financial needs. A guitar has six strings, so it was a natural fit."
The guitars featured a subtle imprint inside the body and arrived in a custom-shaped and graphically designed carton. An accompnying brochure emphasized a "Superior Performance" theme and encouraged recipients to think of the bank as the perfect accompaniment to their financial needs.
After the guitars mailed, the bank's commercial flagship managers made follow-up calls to secure appointments. Altogether, they locked in meetings with 129 business execs. "The numbers were awesome," Johnson says. "The bank wanted a 11-percent response rate and got a 38-percent response rate, nearly quadrupling its initial goal." Plus, the guitar mailing resulted in many long-term commercial relationships in the form of deposits and new opportunities.
By Audrey Seller
Promotional Consultants, February/March 2008
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