If you haven’t seen John Adams, it’s an award-winning, 7-part mini series made by HBO Films on the life of the 2nd President of the United States.  I can’t remember how I came upon this old 2008 marketing campaign reference, but it serves as a good topic to think back on how to create a successful multi-aspect campaign.  When HBO started promoting this back in Feb. of 2008, they did several interesting things that made this truly an innovative stand out campaign:

“Stand out” Idea

HBO took the only written communication medium in 18th Century America – the letter – and linked it to a fairly obscure historical figure.   In this “Power of the Letter” campaign, HBO focused on the letter (and strategically, the Postal Service), as being an extremely revolutionary tool of persuasion and power.  Using this provocative idea, they invite us to learn more about the written word, and ultimately, John Adams.

Central Call to Action

HBO along with their mail fulfillment partner built the mini-site poweroftheletter.com as the central call to action.  The site enabled people to customize any of 6 different greeting cards with John Adams’ quotes and send them to friends and family for free.  The greeting cards all had designs, quotes and even fonts from the early colonial period, but were modified using an online design tool similar to QuantumDigital’s.  HBO picked up the cost of this viral marketing campaign (including postage)! The result was an online experience that enabled consumers to communicate with friends and family using the theme of John Adams as a context.  For the direct order marketers out there, it is true that HBO paid for all this marketing under the flag of the show launch and brand building (as there were no immediate direct sales made), but the important aspect that could be extended to direct order models is that they focused on enabling a conversation amongst their audience.  Once you enable people to talk in an arena that you facilitate, it adds to brand credibility and revenue down the line.  Also, post-launch, I would imagine HBO would send a follow up to contest entrants & greeting card senders – as these types of offers are some of the few ways a television studio can use direct marketing with their audience.

Use all Marketing Vehicles Possible

Another aspect that is remarkable is the myriad ways they publicized this central call to action.  Among them:

• Inserted John Adams quotes on USPS receipts (3.75 million daily)
• Window “standees” (6 foot tall cardboard cutouts) in 4,000 post offices nationwide
• Window “clings” in 12,000 locations
• Worked with the USPS to stamp cancellations on relevant letters in the USPS mail stream which included a John Adams quote and the mini-site URL
• Partnered with a high school educational org, to educate kids on John Adams
• Presence on main HBO site and web banners
• Agreement to temporarily re-brand the USPS’ own website (see image at top) with the theme of John Adams

While a smaller company may not have the resources for such a partnership with the USPS, there are a myriad avenues to publicize your central call to action with a similar energy (email, blogs, social media, direct mail, flyers, etc.)

Keep the Conversation Going

What HBO did not do well was to use this incredible marketing effort to continue a community.  When you visit the www.poweroftheletter.com website today, it goes nowhere.  This is really astounding considering that the campaign began less than a year ago.  If you really dig on the John Adams website, you find a place for an HBO Users Discussion Forum, but it’s rather lifeless compared to the other discussion forums out there (MySpace for the high school crowds, Facebook, etc.)  A better execution would have been to transform that mini-site into a functioning interaction point for history buffs, possibly by offering the same “send a greeting card” functionality that the original site offered, but with more cost paid by the end user.  If a quality experience (and community) was facilitated, such a site would take very little to keep it running and generate long term DVD sales & possibly syndication interest on other cable channels.   In the long run, communities & relationships are what persist.