The Swinton Mystery Tipper campaign began in March 2008 with the objective of generating insurance leads for Swinton Taxi Division.  Not only did it smash this objective out of the park, but it also won several marketing awards including a DMA Gold in the Financial Services category.  So when we were tasked earlier this year with improving upon it we were a little apprehensive, but netherless we accepted the challenge withgusto and started to devise a bigger and better Mystery Tipper campaign….  but would the awards follow!?

A brief overview

For those of you who are not familiar.  The Mystery Tipper is a mysterious blonde decked out in a mac and trilby who travels across towns and cities in the UK, handing a £1,000 tip to a cabbie who has a ‘Mystery Tipper’ sticker in their cab. Cabbies get a sticker after requesting a taxi insurance quote from Swinton Taxi Division. Easy, effective and successful, The Mystery Tipper’s appeal is its simplicity. that and the lure of a big tip.

Read more…

There’s a few sore heads here this morning at Red C as we had a few ‘shandies’ last night after picking up an awards at the Travel Marketing Awards, which were held at the InterContinental Hotel at park Lane, London last night.

The Travel Marketing Awards are the only event of their kind recognising marketing excellence in travel, the awards ceremony is attended by senior agency, travel and tourism professionals representing the entire spectrum of the travel sector.

Read more…

We’re extremely proud of our work on the Swinton Mystery Tipper, especially as it has garnered the agency an armful of awards from two DMA Awards to two ISP Awards and two IPA Effectiveness Awards. We’ve had quite a few people ask to see our winning entry form… so here it is!

CONTEXT AND MARKET BACKGROUND

The insurance sector is a complex and increasingly challenging marketplace. For most of us, insurance has always been a distress purchase – something we grudgingly concede we need to have, and resent the increasing premiums. Three key innovations in the last decade have had a significant impact on the broader market. The launch of Direct Line’s online insurance offer, in 1999, following the formula of its breakthrough approach to offering insurance by telephone a decade earlier, forced every insurer and broker to reassess their approach – here was a company that made buying insurance simple and fuss-free, cutting out the middle man and talking everyday language. This sparked an extended period of discounting in the sector that still has ramifications today.

Read more…

We’ve cracked open the Champers and fired off some party poppers in celebration of being shortlisted for our Swinton Mystery Tipper campaign for the IPA Effectiveness Awards 2009.

The IPA Effectiveness Awards are recognised by agencies and clients as Adland’s most rigorous awards scheme because entrants have to prove to a jury of experienced clients that their communications strategies have worked in hard business terms.

Read more…

Those lovely people at Marketing Week have run a feature about the IDM Business Performance Awards 2009.. and as Red C picked up Bronze in The Diamond Award… our award-winning work for the Mystery Tipper gets a lovely feature.

The IDM Business Performance Awards have been celebrating the most effective and influential marketing for the past 12 years, recognising the strategic contribution of direct, data and digital marketing to business. The most coveted prize in direct marketing, the BPA Diamond becomes ever harder to win as the standard of entries raises the bar each year.

Read more…

Red C has emerged victorious at the prestigious B2B Marketing Awards 2008 in the category of ‘Best Lead Generation’ for the Swinton Mystery Tipper.

Designed to recognise excellence in business-to-business marketing, the B2B Marketing Awards have quickly grown to become the must-attend event in the B2B Marketing Calendar.

Red C’s win means they are the only North West agency to walk away as winners… and it’s a victory which comes only a month before the DMA Awards… an event where Red C are finalists in two categories.

The Swinton Mystery Tipper is a campaign that sees a mysterious woman handing out £1,000 tips to lucky cabbies, who display a Mystery Tipper Sticker, throughout the UK.

The measure of any campaign, though, is in the results. And that’s where the real success of the Mystery Tipper lies.

Nine consecutive record months of results – in a mature market, for a long-established division – is simply exceptional. The success of this year-long campaign, driving up business by 30%, proves that the Mystery Tipper captured the imagination of no-nonsense cabbies.

A powerful concept, executed with acute attention to detail across every touchpoint from exhibitions to Facebook, it has created an uplift in enquiries, quotes and policies that will benefit Swinton’s Taxi Division for several years.

Click here to visit Red C’s facebook page to see more pictures from the night