Back before social media, getting an overnight announcement was very challenging, especially if you wanted to limit who got it. Easy to do now with an email blast, a tweet or a social media post. Not so then.
Steelcase, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of office furniture, needed to rejuvenate its Canadian operation and was holding a national sales meeting in Toronto to introduce its new President to kick off the changes.
The new President wanted to create some immediate positive momentum from his appointment and to win over his new team. Coincidentally, the national sales meeting coincided with their 40th Anniversary of business in Canada.
Calexis was hired to came up with a communications solution. We dodged the issue – and developed a four page newspaper dodger.
What’s a dodger? It is an over-wrap, a flyer, on a newspaper that looks like the newspaper itself – same masthead, same design elements, same fonts. But it is only for limited distribution. It is placed over the regular newspaper and to the casual glance, it looks like it is the newspaper.
The paper we chose to work with was the Globe & Mail, Canada’s most business oriented newspaper.
We created a special dodger for Steelcase that showed a Globe & Mail front page that had news stories just like the regular Globe & Mail – except all the stories were about Steelcase. The headline was “Steelcase Canada Celebrates Forty Years of Success.” It made the meeting appear to be front page news!
Inside, the four page dodger contained: a list of all Steelcase employees on page 2; a list of all Steelcase’s dealers on page three; and, Steelcase’s Mission Statement on the back page.
The actual newspaper inside the dodger was the regular day’s edition of the Globe & Mail. Importantly, there was also a full-page ad for Steelcase included inside that run of press national edition.
Calexis was able to collect 100 copies or so of the day’s paper and the dodgers at about 5 AM from the Globe and Mail printing office. Then, like regular paper delivery boys, we had to hustle our papers up to our paper route.
Our route was in a hotel in the northern suburbs of Toronto where the meeting was to be held and where most of the attendees were staying. We were able to get a list of the rooms Steelcase employees were staying in for our route.
Copies of the paper, with the dodger over-wrap, were slipped under the door of each room. That provided each key employee with a morning, national paper that was all about the coming meeting!
We could hardly believe how excited everyone was when they arrived downstairs for their meeting. They really knew it was a new day for a rejuvenated company. Everyone was talking about the newspaper.
It goes to show you, that creative media solutions were available, even back in the day. And sometimes the message is the medium.
This winning dodger did not require an umpire’s call and it was not wedged into a fence. It just went under a hotel door.