Lumpy Mail will Always Capture Attention
Wood Magazine—a division of the Meredith Corporation—is a resource for all things woodworker focused: be it project plans and templates, how-to instructions, education on the industry itself, and well as supplies and product reviews and evaluations. It was an approach by their marketing department to help generate higher attendance to their annual woodworker’s conference after-party in California.
My responsibility for this project was the design of the entire invitation and co-writing the content with their editors. Creating a custom die-line for the main saw blade element, and created the horizontal cuts on the RSVP cards using an actual table saw on the stack of printed cards (yes it was nerve racking I wrote the content on those cards!). And the final envelopes were shipped with wood shavings and sawdust within them.
Fun Fact! The US Postal Service does not like “bits of things” falling out of envelopes during bulk mailing procedures (still shipped though!). BUT they categorically denied my original intent to use a post-screw to bind the whole pack together in transit. So I feel like we’re even.
And on a post-evaluation of the project Wood Magazine reported a four-fold increase in attendance to the event compared to the previous year. There were some complaints about sawdust getting all over their desks—but this was mostly by corporate advertisers who were invited, the subscribers loved it. The “Free Wood” each attendee received was a young seedling tree in a translucent traveling tube (TSA approved!)—the trees given were specifically custom to the respective regions of North America the attendee was from.
