Royal Mail: LOLXPERIMENT

Credits & Description:

Category: Best Use of Social Media Marketing
Advertiser: ROYAL MAIL
Product/Service: POSTAL SERVICES
Agency: PROXIMITY LONDON
Date of First Appearance: Jan 14 2011
Entrant Company: PROXIMITY LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Entry URL: http://www.youtube.com/lolxforjudges
Executive Creative Director: Caitlin Ryan (Proximity London)
Director of Creativity and Innovation: Debi Bester (Reinvention Works)
Social Psychologist: Nina Lindh (Reinvention Works)
Graduate Creative: Luke McClure (Proximity London)
Graduate Creative: Fiona Brown-Hovelt (Proximity London)
Graduate Creative: Martin Power (Proximity London)
Copywriter: Chris Monk (Proximity London)
Senior Account Manager: Ewa Kwolek (Proximity London)
Art Director: Soni Singleton (Proximity London)
Client Services Director: Emma Rush (Proximity London)
IT Manager: Ian Renn (Proximity London)
Media placement: Faceboook Group - Facebook - December 2010
Media placement: You Tube Vlog - You Tube - December 2010
Media placement: Twitter Profile - Twitter - December 2010
Media placement: Stickham Live Streams - Stickham - 14th Jan 2011
Media placement: WordPress Blog - WordPress - 14th Jan 2011
Media placement: Road Show - Live - 25th Jan 2011
Insights, Strategy & the Idea
Royal Mail has a problem. In a digital world, young people – their future customers – don’t value ‘the mail’. We had to find a way to convince them to re-evaluate the letter. But how, when the sheer weight of evidence said it couldn’t be done? After all, one in ten children has never written a letter, and one in five has never received one.
Undaunted, we turned teens’ response to the letter from ‘Laugh Out Loud’ to ‘Love Our Letters’, by using the media they live by – social networks – to get them to discover a medium they just don’t know.
Creative Execution
Just when everyone thought the letter was history, Royal Mail proved it has a future. We turned teens’ responses to the letter from ‘Laugh Out Loud’ to ‘Love Our Letters’, by using the very media they live by to get them to discover a medium they just don’t know.
Royal Mail entered their social space not by selling ‘the mail’, but by giving teens a reason to discover in ink on paper more about themselves than they ever will in 140 character tweets. In turn, teens reinvented the mail for a social era.
Results and Effectiveness
Just when everyone thought the letter was history, we proved Royal Mail has a future. With a budget that wouldn’t even buy an ad in a teen magazine, with NO celebrities or paid-for media, the LolXperiment got a staggering QUARTER of a MILLION interactions.