The target audience was 5,000+ creative/design directors at award-winning advertising agencies, design studios and interactive shops across the country. 400 full decks were shrink-wrapped and mailed in 6” long clear plastic tubes to select contacts, while an additional 9,200 cards were paired based on recipients’ initials and sent inside transparent vellum A6 envelopes. Both methods allowed spare cards to be shared with executive assistants, project managers and/or internal recruiters.
Because freelancers are often forced to play the name drop game when asked what they’ve been up to lately, it was originally reasoned to just have some fun with this unfortunate industry reality and take it one step further by “letter-dropping” recent resume highlights.
Client discussions involved the desire to create a self-promotional successor to Letter-dropping 1.0 using the same flashcard concept, but with a completely different design, copy and a higher production value in the form of letterpress printing.
The client’s main objective was to maintain his status as quite possibly the most in demand freelance copywriter in the country in terms of the number of projects he’s been performing every year since 2006 (50+). The secondary objective was to continue building his name recognition, which still lags behind several competitors due to their significantly higher number of years of experience.
The inspiration was oversize alphabetical flashcards everyone can relate to from childhood (and could then be easily placed beside or inside the recesses of adult smartphones).
The design solution was not only meaningful but ownable to the client given the sheer volume of projects and awards he performs and wins annually that literally span the alphabet from A-Z.
Since being released in March 2012, the cards have resulted in 1,000%+ R.O.I. in new project work from an entirely different alphabet soup of clients in major markets such as:
NYC: Beardwood, Collins:/Ogilvy, Graham Clifford Design, JDK
L.A.: 180LA, Campbell-Ewald, FERROCONCRETE, Wong Doody
S.F.: AKQA, Eleven, R/GA, Turner Duckworth, Venables Bell
MPLS: Campbell Mithun, Cue Design, KNOCK
In addition, the work has won/been recognized by Cannes' Design Lions, The National ADDYs, PRINT's Regional Design Annual, HOW's Promotional Annual and The Minneapolis Show, along with being viewed, shared or repined over 10,000 times on blogs and websites Coroflot, DesignWorkLife, FFFFOUND! and Pinterest.
Needless to say, the client was quite pleased with all of the above.
