Direct Marketing of another kind

We recently ran this fairly interesting and targeted DM campaign in Bangalore in partnership with Meru Cabs.

We zeroed in on Meru Cabs as they ran a fairly efficient service that catered to a largely business audience (we picked cabs that were plying the airport to city route). This was a captive audience that rode the cab for at least 45 mins and that made the choice even more appealing.

The creative pack consisted of messages at the back of the two front seats and a DM pack that used the case story approach along with a Donation coupon and a Business Reply Envelope as the response devices. The thought was that with the branding and the DM there were sufficient motivation to get the riders to consider making a donation.

The response was good enough to merit extending the activity to Mumbai and Hyederabad. If we could have closed the loop by getting a donation on the spot through a credit card machine (which Meru does have in its Bangalore cab) that would have been ideal and the response rates could have been bumped up significantly.

Another opportunity is to involve the driver in some form - a difficult one as it involves investments in training and so on - but something worth looking into at some point.

The campaign was hugely subsidised by Meru so we had a super ROI :) and they also threw in a few cabs with exterior branding.