newsboys23
New member
This is a long one so here's the TLDR:
Intro
When I left university my friend Giles and I set up 140 Canvas, a small business allowing anyone to design their own tweets and purchase them as canvas prints.
By late 2017 sales were dwindling. We had just £200 left in the budget and desperately needed to get eyeballs on our product in the run-up to Christmas.
Giles Idea
Thankfully Giles had come up with an idea. He showed me a Casey Neistat video where he opens fan mail on camera. He said we should post Casey one of our canvases in the hope that he'd open it on camera and we’d get some exposure. It sounded wacky. But I agreed it was a worth a shot.
So we found ten more YouTubers who did regular "Mail Time" videos, wrote ten funny tweets, printed them off as A1 Canvases, and shipped them to their PO boxes around the world.
The results
A couple of weeks passed and a YouTuber called Chilly did a MailTime video and opened our canvas on camera. She was so impressed with our gift that she gave a free shoutout to our website and pinned my comment to the top of her video. This video ended up with 3.3 million views.
A few more weeks passed and another YouTuber called Sodapoppin opened our canvas on camera. That video ended up with 400k views.
And that was that. £250 spent. 2/10 canvases opened. 20% hit rate. 3.7 million views. 17k uniques our site.
Why it worked?
Having binge-watched countless Mail Time videos to prepare, our number one lesson was that genuine fan mail got an infinitely better reaction than company promotions. So our challenge was to come across like genuine fans.
Whilst most companies sending products included formal letters and sleek packaging we did the complete opposite. We bought glitter, fancy cards, bubblewrap, Christmas wrapping paper and hand wrote personal letters.
For example, our letter to Casey Neistat read:
Alright Casey,
I’ve been a big fan ever since Bike Lanes went viral. I remember watching the Do What You Can’t Video and thinking screw it, I’m going to drop out of uni and learn how to code.
A few months later and I’ve built my first startup 140canvas.com, which sells “Design your own” tweets. I wanted to send you one as a thank you.
Best Wishes,Harry
It's self-promotion without being self-promotion. And that’s key. The best marketing doesn’t look like marketing because as soon as people know they are being sold to they tune out.
Personal touches
Another thing we'd learnt binge watching Mail Time was that personal touches made a big difference. We had a big leg up here because the whole point of our gift was that it was personal. You could write whatever you wanted to.
For example, on the canvas we sent Casey was a tweet from Spike Jonze (his all-time hero) saying just how much he liked the new daily vlog. If bloggers think in headlines, YouTubers think in thumbnails. And we thought Casey holding a huge tweet from Spike Jonze would make a pretty awesome thumbnail.
To summarise
If anyone's inspired and is looking to replicate:
If you liked the article I write about real world marketing examples (like this one) over on https://marketingexamples.com. Each example is also distilled into an easy to digest thread on twitter. passion project. all free. Any questions, hit me in the comments
- I needed to get eyeballs on my canvas startup in the run up to Christmas
- So I posted 10 custom canvas prints to YouTubers PO Boxes
- 2/10 opened on camera.
- One YouTuber was so blown away she linked our site in the description
- Total views: 3.7 million. Unique Web visitors: 17k. Total Cost £250
Intro
When I left university my friend Giles and I set up 140 Canvas, a small business allowing anyone to design their own tweets and purchase them as canvas prints.
By late 2017 sales were dwindling. We had just £200 left in the budget and desperately needed to get eyeballs on our product in the run-up to Christmas.
Giles Idea
Thankfully Giles had come up with an idea. He showed me a Casey Neistat video where he opens fan mail on camera. He said we should post Casey one of our canvases in the hope that he'd open it on camera and we’d get some exposure. It sounded wacky. But I agreed it was a worth a shot.
So we found ten more YouTubers who did regular "Mail Time" videos, wrote ten funny tweets, printed them off as A1 Canvases, and shipped them to their PO boxes around the world.
The results
A couple of weeks passed and a YouTuber called Chilly did a MailTime video and opened our canvas on camera. She was so impressed with our gift that she gave a free shoutout to our website and pinned my comment to the top of her video. This video ended up with 3.3 million views.
A few more weeks passed and another YouTuber called Sodapoppin opened our canvas on camera. That video ended up with 400k views.
And that was that. £250 spent. 2/10 canvases opened. 20% hit rate. 3.7 million views. 17k uniques our site.
Why it worked?
Having binge-watched countless Mail Time videos to prepare, our number one lesson was that genuine fan mail got an infinitely better reaction than company promotions. So our challenge was to come across like genuine fans.
Whilst most companies sending products included formal letters and sleek packaging we did the complete opposite. We bought glitter, fancy cards, bubblewrap, Christmas wrapping paper and hand wrote personal letters.
For example, our letter to Casey Neistat read:
Alright Casey,
I’ve been a big fan ever since Bike Lanes went viral. I remember watching the Do What You Can’t Video and thinking screw it, I’m going to drop out of uni and learn how to code.
A few months later and I’ve built my first startup 140canvas.com, which sells “Design your own” tweets. I wanted to send you one as a thank you.
Best Wishes,Harry
It's self-promotion without being self-promotion. And that’s key. The best marketing doesn’t look like marketing because as soon as people know they are being sold to they tune out.
Personal touches
Another thing we'd learnt binge watching Mail Time was that personal touches made a big difference. We had a big leg up here because the whole point of our gift was that it was personal. You could write whatever you wanted to.
For example, on the canvas we sent Casey was a tweet from Spike Jonze (his all-time hero) saying just how much he liked the new daily vlog. If bloggers think in headlines, YouTubers think in thumbnails. And we thought Casey holding a huge tweet from Spike Jonze would make a pretty awesome thumbnail.
To summarise
If anyone's inspired and is looking to replicate:
- Get together a list of YouTubers who do Mail Time
- Check if there's any whose audience you share
- Post your product (add a personal touch)
- Go the extra mile: packaging, glitter, sweets, handwritten letter ...
- Hope you get lucky
If you liked the article I write about real world marketing examples (like this one) over on https://marketingexamples.com. Each example is also distilled into an easy to digest thread on twitter. passion project. all free. Any questions, hit me in the comments