Whatman microbiology challenge direct mail
Making microbiology impossible to ignore
Products that are used to test foods and beverages for contamination are not exactly the talk of the party. You wouldn’t, for example, break the ice by bragging about your ability to detect Listeria on a meat slicer. But for Whatman, a global manufacturer of lab filtration products, it was very important to get people talking about their new line of microbiology testing products. Here at Captains of Industry we concluded that there were two equally important parts to their marketing challenge: they needed to introduce their new range of products and brand themselves as the world’s leading expert in microbiology.
Captains created a fun and memorable integrated campaign that we titled the Whatman Microbiology Challenge. A combination of email blasts and direct mail postcards invited Whatman’s audience to take an online quiz that tested their knowledge of microbiology testing issues. People who took the quiz were automatically entered to win an MBS I – a machine that performs an automated testing process for micro-contaminants. The Microbiology Challenge proved to be hugely popular among microbiologists, with Whatman experiencing a corresponding jump in sales.