Project Description: Communicate the importance of using legitimately licensed software to the graphic design community

Background:
The Business Software Alliance is the world's largest organization dedicated to eradicating software piracy. Through its public relations and advertising agency, the Business Software Alliance regularly turns to Marketry of Bellevue, WA, www.marketry.com, for assistance with challenging direct marketing campaigns.

Research done by the Business Software Alliance found that some graphic designers using computer aided design software (created by Adobe, Bentley, and other companies) were not always concerned with the concept of using pirated software nor did they focus on having legitimately licensed programs or software products. The challenges were how to reach graphic designers, via what medium, and with a message that would be successful but would not sermonize. Dittus Communications in Washington, D.C., www.dittus.com, (the Business Software Alliance's public relations agency), contacted Marketry to help solve the targeting problem. A decision was made to use a multi-channel approach, using direct mail and permission based email.

Strategy:
Marketry provided list recommendations and set up the use of certain direct mail and permission-based email list resources targeting carefully selected graphic designer audiences. Dittus Communications developed flash based creative that revolved around a character named Meg A. Byte, a designer who helped communicate the importance of using legitimately licensed software. A postcard was sent via postal mail and the flash based message was also sent via email pointing recipients to a special website with more information.

Results:
According to Dittus Communications, the campaign was extremely successfull. Within one week of the campaign kickoff, the special website received over 65,000 hits, measuring a response rate of 18.5%. Visitor sessions averaged over 6 minutes. In addition, the campaign won a Mercury Gold Award for web-based campaigns.

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