The challenge.

Autodesk wanted our help in raising awareness of emerging design and manufacturing technologies – with a particular focus on generative design and additive manufacturing. They were selective about their audience – we needed to target senior executives in major corporates within the Tech, Automotive and Space sectors.

With huge buying power and limited time, our first challenge was to reach them. As top-tier clients of Autodesk, they’re entitled to 1:1 support from an Autodesk expert consultant – but, in order to make use of this service, they needed to know about it. So, once we’d successfully attracted their attention, our second challenge was to motivate this audience to act and initiate a technical conversation with Autodesk about generative design.

Employing strategic thinking to achieve our goal.

For this niche audience, we didn’t believe digital, emails or letters would achieve the impact nor cut-through required. Digital didn’t feel personal enough and we also had to consider the fact that these people have someone filtering what they see. Our solution needed to bypass PAs and capture the senior executives’ attention, opening them up to a conversation and demonstrating how much Autodesk valued them.

We designed and crafted a prestigious, high-value direct mail piece with a personalised brochure for each contact. To build intrigue, we included a unique 3D-printed model plane, while a built-in screen was added to play a video case study about Autodesk advanced manufacturing.

The innovative aviation case study used generative design to create an interior wall within the plane. This was optimised for material and weight efficiency, with comparable strength characteristics. Of course, this was our inspiration for including the model plane and it served as a great motivator for our audience to watch the video – earning themselves an explanation for this unusual addition (it was a scale replica of the concept plane for 2050).

How it all came together.

We invested a lot of time and thought to ensure the packaging looked and felt the part. It needed to be a prestigious item of mail that was worthy of their attention. The size was selected for stand-out appeal and we used bubble envelopes with various layers of wrapping to make it a little more mysterious.

Once opened, the mailer was very tactile. We put a UV gloss on the box with a pattern you couldn’t quite see until you felt it. The intention was, it would be near-on irresistible for our senior executives to pick up. Each mailer looked the part with a premium finish suitable for the audience.

The messaging was crafted to tie together our two objectives and inspire action, ‘Together, we can make anything’. Accompanying our copy, as a virtual introduction to their assigned Autodesk contact, was a photo and the direct email address of their respective consultant. To follow this up, a month later, Autodesk sent out a triggered email to check in and prompt them to get in touch.

With just 45 mailers produced, this was intentionally a highly targeted campaign which aimed to simply open doors and push through a select few high-value deals.