Case Studies

Background

Founded in 1982, The National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare (NCPSSM) is a 501(c)(4) advocacy-based organization which focuses its efforts on protecting, preserving, promoting and ensuring the financial security, health and wellbeing of current and future generations of maturing Americans. Being an advocacy-based organization can be difficult due to the changing political environment which can lead to major fluctuations in year-over-year results and unreliable income for the organization. It also means that there are very few “control” packages as campaign themes and formats change from year-to-year. Thus began the journey to develop an evergreen annual appeal package that would achieve the following:

1. A topic and format that could consistently be mailed year-over-year and that is not reliant on who was controlling the government,
2. A package that could mail at a letter rate to minimize cost of the current doormat inline package control; and,
3. A package format that would stand out in the mailbox clutter.

TLC solution

The Annual Appeal is scheduled to land in homes in early May. As the team talked through evergreen topics, one theme continued to rise to the top: the Congressional budgeting process.  It is at this time every year that Congress is working through their appropriations process which specifies how much money will go to different government agencies and programs. Inevitably during this process, proposals to end traditional Medicare and repeal the Affordable Care Act are presented, both of which would increase prescription drug costs and make it difficult for seniors to keep their doctors. And thus the Prescription Drug package concept was born. We created a mailer which closely resembles a prescription bag that one would receive at a local pharmacy. We adhered a Warning Label to the carrier to give the mailer a sense of urgency and authenticity. Inside the bag is a personalized letter, reply form and Petition to Congress along with a legal disclaimer and CRE. All of the internal contents are paper clipped together with return postage stamps. Strategically, we felt the unorthodox mailer and heft of the package would make it stand out in the mail box. And the involvement device and return postage would guarantee a higher response rate.