Have you heard of Direct Mail packs receiving multiple bids on ebay? I hadn’t either until I searched for ‘Rapha’ on ebay a few weeks ago. Rapha produce super stylish, retro tinged clothing for the road cyclist and is quite an aspirational brand for me. In fact completely aspirational as I don’t own a single piece of their clothing yet! The direct mail pack that was subject to intense bidding on ebay was a simple 16-page leaflet with ravishing full bleed black and white photography, no prices and few words except for the web address and a list of products. It sold for an incredible £8.50. Extraordinary customer behavior by any brand’s standards I think, let alone one that only launched in 2004 with one core product; a super expensive softshell jacket. Did I bid for the DM pack?  Of course not. I already had a copy of my own stashed safely away.

What makes this DM pack so highly covetable is that the photographs within it capture those transcendent moments that any road cyclist can associate with – 2 cyclists shrouded in mist pausing by a cross at the top of a high alpine pass, an exhausted post ride cyclist cooling his feet in a bidet, a pre ride cyclist peering into the mid distance out of a misted window. The art direction is beautifully understated, with a nod to a bygone era of European cycling. It’s brave too, with the clothes barely visible in many of the shots. The photos perfectly capture the suffering, romance and passion of road cycling and create an aura of authenticity around the brand. They are also highly motivational in getting you off the sofa and out on your bike!

Of course all of this magic didn’t happen by accident. The photography is by Ben Ingham and Rapha was founded by Simon Mottram, who used to be a brand consultant. So you’d expect him to get it right. Mottram is also a passionate cyclist, which perhaps explains how Rapha has so quickly discovered it’s own authentic brand DNA. Rapha have rapidly built up a fiercely loyal cult of customers including Paul Smith, Jake Gyllenhaal and er… me. As a luxury online brand Rapha ticks all the boxes with it’s content rich website, precise customer insights (they know that their target customer is male, 37, married, living in London and earning over £100K) innovative products, high quality ‘Roleur’ magazine (which warrants a blog article by itself) and successful sponsored cycling team. But it’s the way that Rapha use photography imbued with myth and metaphor to enhance their brand to create real value that I find most impressive.

You never know I might even be persuaded to get my credit card out one day.

Tags: Advertising Agency, Advertising Photography, Aspirational Brands, Ben Ingham, Brand DNA, Catalogue Design, Commercial Photography, Digital Agency, Direct Mail Pack, Direct Marketing Agency, Ebay, Graphic Design Agency, Jake Gyllenhaal, Manchester Marketing Agency, Marketing Agency, Paul Smith, PPC Advertising Agency, Rapha, Roleur Magazine, Simon Mottram

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 27th, 2010 at 7:37 pm and is filed under We Like. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.