Category: Travel, Entertainment & Leisure
Advertiser: STICHTING LEZEN
Product/Service: POETRY DAY
Agency: LEO BURNETT BRUSSELS
Communication: Rune Buerman (Stichting Lezen)
Managing Director: Barbara Vangheluwe (Leo Burnett)
Creative Director: Tom Loockx (Leo Burnett)
Creative Director: Jorrit Hermans (Leo Burnett)
Traffic Manager: Veronique Allard (Leo Burnett)
Poet: Joke Van Leeuwen
Poet: Stijn Vranken
Poet: Lies Van Gasse
Poet: Ester Naomi Perquin
Graphic Design: Benoit Germeau (Leo Burnett)
Media placement: Email - E-mail partners, sponsors, amateurs - 19/12/2011
Insights, Strategy & the Idea
Each year, The Reading Foundations organises Poetry Day. For this event they have very little budget (€800) and no big media available.
At the same time, they need so sell a topic that is often perceived as dull and dusty.
The objective was to make the big audience familiar with Poetry Day and the fun and beautiful side of poetry. The idea was to use their own strength and their own free channels: poetry and mail.
By changing the ordinary out of office reply into Out of Office Poetry: auto-replies written by the organisation’s own famous poets.
Creative Execution
We turned a zero-cost-out-of-office-reply setting into Out of Office Poetry, worth €58,000, and a lot of attention.
Beautiful poems were written by the organisation’s own poets and used an automatic office reply during the holidays.
Under each poem a clear link referred to Poetry Day and the website where people could discover all poems and copy-paste their favourite to use in their own mail. To further spread the message. With fun. For free.
Results and Effectiveness
On a production budget of only €800, Out office poetry generated earned media coverage worth €58,000. The out of office poems were even read aloud on the radio news.
Within two weeks, we attracted 20,000 unique out of office poetry users.
For reference, in Belgium hardly 500 poetry bundles are sold every week.
These 20,000 users sent tens of thousands of poems through their out of office assistants.
Poetry Day 2012 was celebrated throughout Belgium and the Netherlands in the media, on the streets, in libraries and bookshops.
Out of office poetry still has many users who prefer a poem over a standard reply.