Royal Mail Mr Complete case study

Royal Mail wanted to challenge the perception among some businesses that direct mail was old fashioned. It also wanted to persuade its business customers that they could boost the performance of digital campaigns by combining them with mail. 

Its agency, Proximity, decided that the best way to show the effectiveness of a multi-channel strategy was to have people experience it, so it created the memorable character ‘Mr Complete’.

The first mailing, targeted at 6,000 senior marketers, directed the recipient to their own personalised URL where a virtual origami man presented the benefits of online and offline media. The follow-up direct mail pack included a hand-crafted version of Mr Complete. 

The campaign was a roaring success, encouraging lapsed direct mail users to re-try the medium and generating an extra £1.7m of revenue and an ROI of 6:1. It also won silver in the Campaign Websites category at the 2008 DMA Awards.