BMW Canada
BMW introduces personalized junk mail. Huh?! Not the kind of headline we’d want for our client, but…

Case History
In the fall of 1980, we wanted to invite people to see the new BMW coupe. We didn’t want all Torontonians. Just the ones whose incomes suggested they were already in the market for a luxury car – and just the ones within a 15 minute drive of key dealerships. We could hardly do a mail drop (“not the correct image, after all, you know”). Besides, we didn’t want all households.

Back then, the “very latest marketing tool” consisted of being able to send a generic package to people on a magazine’s subscription list – and being able to specify the postal code of households you wanted to receive the mail. We wanted to merge census information (specifically household income) with the magazine list and then only mail to homes within a certain income range, within in our trading area. The only “income” lists were census records – not only were they out of date, we had to go down to City Hall to get them!

We got the lists only to be told, “Can’t be done”. We persevered. Finally we found a very small (at the time) company, with a young man willing to take on the “impossible” task of putting two databases together. Now we had a list – but there was no firm set up to send out a personalized letter, to a specific household, from a specific sender. The only printers that would work with the new computer our firm had purchased used ‘Daisy Wheels’ and tractor feed paper (don’t worry if you’re too young to remember these things; they are best forgotten!). If you do remember, then you’ll now that this was not suitable for sending anything to people who could afford a BMW. So we bought a new IBM Selectric III typewriter and did every letter by hand!

BMW was delighted: for much less than it would have cost to run advertisements in the right places, the right people were reached and the coupe sold twice as quickly as anyone could have hoped.

Since then the industry has evolved, and many of the players we involved in the process went on to become leaders in the data-driven direct marketing industry. About 15 years ago, Jane-Michèle Clark was asked, “You do realize what you started, don’t you?!” To which we reply: “Whoda thunk it?”

Interested in learning more about people who think like the above (and the company they keep)? Please click here.