IBM Managed Infrastucture Services direct mail case study

Outsourcing services are not easy to sell. There's not much fun to be had talking about infrastructure management, compliance and regulatory issues. However, these matters do take up a disproportionate amount of time for businesses - particularly chief information officers (CIOs), the target audience of IBM's B2B campaign in the Netherlands.

So Ogilvy Amsterdam decided to inject a bit of life in to its direct mailer, sending a working mini-shredder and some lengthy 'to-do' lists that CIOs could enjoy shredding up. The relief of doing this was comparable to the feeling that they'd have as they handed over all those tedious tasks to IBM's outsourcing team - leaving them to focus on the big-picture issues.

As well as showing IBM's sense of humour, the mini-shredder prompted more than 10% of the recipients to make an appointment to talk to the IT company about its Managed Infrastucure Services.