Direct Mail Campaign

Interface Systems, Inc. had created Legacy-to-Internet technology (L2I) — a breakthrough that allowed older, “legacy” mainframe computers to communicate seamlessly with the Internet. Yet the company’s targets for this new technology — CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs at top firms in the U.S. and the U.K. — were difficult to reach with traditional direct marketing. At this level, most mail is screened by the target’s secretarial staff. Glossy literature seldom gets through. So Interface Systems contacted AgencyAxis for marketing that could go beyond the corporate gatekeepers — just as their own L2I technology broke down barriers between mainframes and the Internet.

To get the message into the hands of senior executives, AgencyAxis decided to contrast the high-tech, 21st-century L2I solution with old-fashioned technology — like the mainframes the targets were using to run their businesses. AgencyAxis then created a series of high-impact dimensional mailings designed to bypass secretarial screens. The first mailing included a manual telegraph key and the message, “Are your legacy applications fluent in Internet code?” Next, the targets received a tin-can phone (two tin cans connected with a piece of string) and the question, “Can your legacy applications speak to the Internet any better than this?” The final mailing contained an Internet “language course” — complete with flashcards — and the message, “How to speak Internet in just 10 days.”