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.

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You know when you were little and you went to your Grandparent’s house and listened for hours about what life was like, ‘in their day’? They used tin baths, outside loos and they didn’t have a telly. It sounded alien, especially the telly bit. I used to spend hours wondering just what they did to fill their time. Well, I suppose families were bigger back then.

It never occurred to me that stories I tell to my kids would make me appear just as archaic. I’m only 35, but it’s happened already. I was telling my 6 year old the story about how we didn’t have a telephone in our house when we were growing up. There was a phone booth at the end of the street that took 2 pence pieces and I used to organise my teenage social life from there. It would ring out and either be picked up by me at a pre-arranged time or by a local kid playing out. If it was the latter there would be a knock at the door of number 7, where I lived or a shout up at my bedroom window, “Helen, someone’s rung for you, it’s Louise.” I would put my shoes on and run down to the phone and spend hours racking up Louise’s Dad’s telephone bill.

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Several years ago my art director and I devised a campaign for Rolls Royce that we called ‘whispers’. The campaign was created in reaction to the belief within BMW Innovations (which ran the marketing for Rolls Royce) that Rolls Royce did not need to advertise due to the prestige nature of the brand.

Our ‘whispers’ campaign went like this. We had a new Rolls Royce Phantom that would basically be seen in all the right places. From Yacht Clubs in the South of France, to events around the world held at prestigious places where only the very A-list people would be seen.

A couple made-up of an older gentleman (think George Clooney look-alike) and his younger gorgeous model-like wife, would pull up for lunch at a Yacht Club or attend a party. They would be allowed to leave their Rolls Royce Phantom outside the front entrance or in the near vicinity… before walking into the party, enjoying themselves and then driving home.

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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.

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