A few years ago our Mystery Tipper picked up an array of marketing awards… and after a couple of years of continuing to deliver some impressive results for Swinton’s Taxi Division she has been nominated by the lovely people at the DMA Awards in the category of ‘Best business performance or improvement’. Needless to say we’re all really chuffed here at Red C towers and have already begun polishing those shoes and ironing those gowns for the award-ceremony!

The Direct Marketing Association Awards don’t just reward great looking creative. They reward excellence in results and delivering business performance through insightful, inventive and innovative marketing strategies that feed into great looking creative that then go on to deliver stunning results for clients.

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We love books at Red C. And we especially love books that contain great advertising case studies, just like ‘Advertising Works 18′, which features a case study on our award-winning work for the Swinton Mystery Tipper.

‘Advertising Works 18′ shows how marketing communications has helped organisations including UKTV, Swinton Group and Halifax, to translate big ideas into impressive results on small budgets. So it’s perfect for anyone wanting to produce effective campaigns or drive their business to greater success.

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It’s no big secret that I’m a bad loser. I hold my hands up and fully accept that my inability to be gracious in defeat is one of my weak points. Yet it is also a strong point too… as it drives me, pushes me harder and makes me ensure I have explored every opportunity for my clients. Simply because I want to create something special that will not only exceed the goals set in the brief… but also deliver some awards because the strategy is sound, it looks damned good, is incredibly well written and has pulled like a freight train.

For me, winning is key to a passionate, productive, purposeful, and prosperous life. If I were to value it less than I do, then I fear I would begin to say goodbye to my talents as a creative. The will to win is what drives me to be the best I can be in everything I do… and I have seen first hand what a winning mentality can do to an agency.

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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.

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It’s fair to say over the last year and a half our campaign for the Swinton Mystery Tipper has racked up a few awards. Two DMA Awards, two ISP Awards, an IDM Business Performance Award, a B2B Marketing Award and now the icing on the cake… two IPA Effectiveness Awards!

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.

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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.

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Red C are celebrating picking up another prestigious award for the Swinton Mystery Tipper; this time the award being the Bronze IDM Business Performance Diamond Award.

The IDM Business Performance Awards have been celebrating the most effective and influential marketing for the past eleven years, recognising the strategic contribution of modern, accountable marketing to business.

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Red C’s Mystery Tipper campaign for Swinton’s Taxi Division has been selected as one of the finalists for the overall Diamond Award, at this year’s IDM Business Performance Awards.

The IDM Diamond Award is the most coveted prize in direct marketing. It celebrates the long-term contribution direct marketing can make to the success of a business. So it’s fair to say we’re pretty chuffed to be nominated. 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

Our ‘Under the skin’ approach led us to understand Taxi drivers. That they are hard-working, hard-done-by, no nonsense characters. Getting their business can be tough, but once you’ve got it they can help you multiply it by word of mouth.

So when Swinton’s Taxi division came to us to ceate a promotion to drive enquiries for Taxi insurance… we knew we needed to create something special. Enter The Swinton Mystery Tipper. The campaign uses trade press, DM, flyers and shout outs on local radio to get the word out about a mysterious woman tipping cabbies a grand in different UK cities throughout 2008. No skill required, just a sticker. And to get a sticker, you have to get a quote. Easy, effective and successful, the Mystery Tipper’s appeal is its simplicity. It’s made a good few cabbies a grand richer and has given Swinton Taxi Division record results. Read more…