American Refugee Committee

American Refugee Committee Helps Survivors of Conflict Reclaim Their Lives.

The challenge of this assignment was to create a package that could beat ARC’s current control mailing. I wrote 3 out of the 5 tests.

We took the many messages, the many things ARC does, and created one package per message, in different formats. Here are two.

• 1. The “water” package boiled down the importance of having access to water into the most basic thought and smallest package we could create. We fit the entire message into a 4.5″ x 11″  tri-fold brochure. And added a tried-and-true premium: personalized address labels. Basic, proven direct mail techniques.

I also really liked package #2 for it’s great storytelling.

• 2. The “child” package begins with an attention-grabbing opening line:

“Why he didn’t kill the boy, I may never understand.”

Like the “water” package, this test picked a single topic, namely, the work ARC does with refugee children.  However, it took the opposite approach to the “water package.” Instead of the shortest, smallest package we could devise this had a long, 4-pg letter.

I had the privileged of interviewing a worker who had just returned from a camp in Sudan. I was honored to tell this heart-wrenching story on her behalf. This package did well, but did not win. (IMO it could have done much better with a better envelope tease.) Anyway…

THE WINNER: the “water” package beat-the-control by 5 to 1. 5x the return!