Out of the Box - DM - Unstoppable Website ENDSOON

SSE Energy is one of the UK's largest energy companies. They came to us with a CRM problem - millions of their customers had not been opted in for email permissions. (Costly for SSE, and a giant missed marketing opportunity)

So our task was simple, write an email incentivising customers to move over to e-billing, and SSE would piggy-back off it to collect opt them in to marketing permissions at the same time.

We were told that we only had one shot at it. That it had to work first time.

In other words, we needed an idea.

SSE stood out from the other five UK energy giants in one clear way; they have really warm customer service people in their call centres who genuinely go out of their way to help customers.

For example, we watched a video of Tracey, a real customer services agent who was moved to tears talking about how she had personally driven to do an elderly customer's shopping in their hour of need.

So we decided to bottle that same spirit and blend it into a corporate email, adding warmth to the formal corporate tone and speaking to customers on a more human level.

We designed a special
email with hand-
writing TOUCHES OVER
THe corporate letter-
head

FROM a real life
customer services
superhero.

For an email
that felt like
it came from
a real person

Sapient Nitro, the tech-hybrid advertising agency, had bought tickets for a corporate box at the London Olympics 2012 100m final, which would be sent to the CEOs of some of the UK's biggest brands.

Now, most people would leap at the opportunity to see this rare event up close and personal, but CEOs don't get days off, they have to make days off.

So we needed an idea that would make the invitation a bit special - powering out of the blocks and blazing an ink-trail into CEOs' diaries.

One day to think about it.

Three days to produce the idea.

All the agency creatives trying to crack it.

From Jesse Owens onwards, there has been something historic about the men's 100m final. Sometimes a statement of national power on the global stage. Sometimes an expression of individual human brilliance. But it's always a moment.

For those 10 seconds, the whole world seems to catch its breath.

So I came up with a message that captured the singularity the moment: "SEE HISTORY BEING WRITTEN."

After that, the job was to find a clever piece of tech way to bring the message to life (thus highlighting Sapient Nitro's tech-marketing USP).

So, with only 3 days production time, my art director and I rushed to Bloomsbury to find some good quality 19thC-style manuscript paper, and we called up production wizards Keyboard Interactive to create a message, in invisible UV ink, that would appear to write itself out once the box was opened.

A box arrives
in the mail

OPening the box
triggers Uv lightS

Activating the invisible ink
on the manuscript paper

GRADUALLY
REvealing
the message

THE UNSTOPPABLE THOUGHT

TOBY MCMILLAN, Copywriter

In and Out of the Box

SSE ENERGY - TRACEY'S PERMISSIONS EMAIL (PITCH IDEA / UNPRODUCED)

BRIEF

THE IDEA

TRACEY'S permissions EMAIL

LONDON OLYMPICS 100m FINAL - THE UV INKVITATION

BRIEF

THE IDEA

BESPOKE - 100m final OLYMPICS UV INVITE

toby@unstoppablethought.com

+44(0)7862247422