Managing and Optimising a Full Range of Media Vehicles To Maximise Both Sales and Brand Value
We were initially retained by electronics retailer Dick Smith Electronics (DSE) on a consultancy basis to transition the company’s internal advertising department from pasteboard to digital art.
The Write Stuff subsequently took charge of the creative and strategic components of the retailer’s entire marketing output, directing a creative staff of five layout/assembly artists, one junior copywriter and a production junior.
Every month, this creative section produced a minimum of:
- One four-colour brochure (some months two or even three were conceived and produced). These varied in size between four broadsheet and sixteen tabloid pages).
- At least twelve magazine advertisements
- Upwards of fifteen radio scripts (a mix of “pre-records” and “live reads”.
- Sundry additional press and magazine advertisements for general and specialty publications.
- Two six-page “technical” mailers/magazine inserts for the electronics hobbyist and professional markets.
In addition, the company’s massive 224-page, full-colour annual catalogue, featuring thousands of individual items, required exceptional organisational, craft and creative effort. The first edition we supervised was completed in 60% of the time previously required – some six weeks ahead of schedule.
The department also supplied all the point-of-sale requirements of the company’s 200-odd stores – from price tickets to “silent salesmen”, in-store posters to product brochures, direct mail packs and many varied customer relationship programs.
Aside from training and mentoring the staff in the difficult process of modernising their operations, we completely revised the company’s entire marcomms briefing and approval processes, instituting a systematic approach. There were virtually no marketing systems in place when we arrived.
One of our more prescient innovations was the creation of the company’s first ever Customer Relations Management programs – Computer Easy and Cellular Easy – comprehensive lifetime customer plans carefully designed to generate add-on sales, new customer referral and improved customer satisfaction. The result was millions of dollars of previously unrealised, highly cost-effective repeat business.