BC Hydro - World Energy Congress mailing.

Business-to-Business - Traffic Generating Promotion aimed at an "unreachable" audience of Kings, Dictators, and Mega-CEOs.

Purpose: To bring prospects to their Trade Show Booth at the World Energy Congress. The World Energy Congress is mammoth event, held every three years. Includes all Energy-related companies and organizations.  Petroleum, Hydro, Fuel Generation of Power.  Attended by powerful company people and world leaders - in many countries the Energy Minister is the chief Governmental official. To quote BC Hydro "Everyone arrives in their private jets - all 3000." They can buy anything because they are wealthy or very wealthy. Many dress in full Military Uniforms - their symbol of power. 

Our objective was to get these multi-millionaires and billionaires motivated to attend a BC Hydro Trade Show booth, "buried in the back of the building" - a relatively poor location at the show. BC Hydro had a 1000 sq ft booth, yet was dwarfed by the other "Football-field size booths" from the Mammoth Players in the Energy business.

The Prize:

We created a prize of an all-expenses-paid fishing trip to Campbell River, where the catching of enormous salmon is almost guaranteed.  Fishermen will appreciate how big a 30 to 40 pound salmon can be.

These wealthy individuals can buy anything they want. This prize was seen by local BC residents as ordinary, but for Foreigners this prize would be seen as extra-ordinary.

We were fortunate enough to gain access to the Trade Show mailing list, and specific knowledge of the hotels each delegate would stay in. We planned two mailings:

Mailing #1: Sent by DHL Courier Express directly to the known physical address of each of the attendees. Timing: about 6-weeks in advance of the Trade Show.

The Package consisted of: 

On Letterhead bearing the Official Gold Seal Of the Province of BC, a personal letter from the BC Premier to each attendee.  

A fancy gold foil salmon embossing in a quasi-native-indian style was used in four (4) places. 

1) On the outer envelope.  

2) On the bilingual duotone brochure.  The Brochure was also diecut at the gold salmon to simulate the salmon jumping out of the brochure/water.  

3)  The gold foil salmon was also embossed twice on the entry form, making an common entry form look quite sharp. In five different places there was an expensive gold foil image.

It looked expensive, but the use of the identical gold foil salmon throughout made it more reasonably priced. It looked super-classy.

A personal letter from the Premier of BC:

Sent in a standard giant DHL International Express Courier envelope, which carried off the importance of the message. Truly you could hear the secretary of Mr Big say: "Oh, you got a DHL Courier package with a letter from the Premier of BC. Do you want to read it?"

Mailing #2:

Delivered to the door knob of his hotel suite, on the night before the Trade Show. We sent a reminder of the earlier mailing, and another gold-embossed Entry Form.

Fantastic Response:

This campaign was successful in all aspects.

Success in the Media: Province Newspaper Front Page Headline read:

  "Hydro nets $30 Million Deal". 

Success at the Trade Show: Trade Show Managers reported that the traffic count at the Trade Show was highest at the BC Hydro Booth. In spite of the poor location and small booth size, BC Hydro got plenty of attention from the attendees.

Success in meeting the objective of attracting these "impossible to reach" world leaders. BC Hydro Executives reported that some very powerful Military Figures would walk directly to the deposit drum and whip out their entry forms. This gave the BC Hydro executives an opportunity to talk directly to the President of Bolivia, or King or CEO or Dictator or whatever. The Big Salmon angle showed how environmentally conscious BC Hydro was. 

BC Hydro considered it a big success in every category.

Since this show is held only every three years, it was crucial that this mailing do the job effectively and thoroughly. We spent considerable time understanding the needs of BC Hydro, Klohn Krippen - their engineering division, the Mega-Billionaire attendees, and the Trade Show regulations and possibilities.

We stayed on-budget and produced this campaign relatively cheaply through use of cheap-printing-tricks, such as the re-use of the salmon-shaped gold embossed die.

Powerful and Stunning in performance. Classy. Very Effective. Leap in activity.