Ugly Is Beautiful
During a session today on communications and marketing audits, Kevin Whorton presented a case study on Catholic Relief Services, where he used to work, and showed a picture of a direct mail package sent by the organization that he admitted was "ugly." It had very little color, an old-fashioned look, black-and-white photos, lots of text ...
Ugly it might be, but he said it also consistently produced the best results of anything else they sent out, and as a control package in tests consistently beat out all their other packages.
He said every time he sent it out, he heard from some consultants who saw it and would say, "Hey, we can make that package much better for you, we can make it four-color, we can make it look really good!" To which he would say, "You don't know much about direct mail, do you?"
I've written about this before on my own blog, but it bears repeating and I'm glad Kevin's experience backs up ours: the marketing and communications pieces that we pass around the conference room for everyone to go "ooh and ahh" over aren't necessarily the pieces that get the responses we want. If you're asking for money (whether that's a direct appeal, like the organization Kevin profiled, or if you're selling a product or event to a price-conscious market), sometimes sending something that looks expensive won't get you the best results.