The Big Idea: "Make Your Money Work For You"
Tell us a little about the client, and what they were trying to accomplish by enlisting MLT Creative to hatch this campaign.
Kelly Pires, account executive: “MAFS” stands for Manheim Financial Services, and they are the world’s largest financing source for car dealers. They work with mostly independent car dealers -- there are anywhere between 45,000-60,000 of these small business operators across the country. Independent car dealers are not affiliated with any franchise. It’s a real tricky market to reach, and MAFS has had more success than anyone at becoming their most trusted resource.
What they came to us with was, they actually have more new products and more credit to offer to these dealers than ever before, and they wanted some way to break through. Their own research has shown that even though they were the category leader, they had a lot of room for improvement on brand awareness. One of the unique things about this business is that all of these independent dealers come together at these big wholesale auctions around the country every week. And the financing of the inventory that they have on their lot is called “floor planning,” and that’s what MAFS provides to these independent dealers.
Well, to make it as simple as possible, we took it down to the fact that they had money available for these dealers to “put to work.” These are credit lines, basically, for them to purchase inventory that they’re then gonna sell and make money on. So “putting money to work” was kind of the underlying concept. And we thought what better way than to literally let the iconic faces of these presidents that are on all of our currency function as the faces of this campaign. To add a little personality to the brand, and make them seem more accessible and friendlier, we took all of these presidents and developed them as characters that actually became these big, visible point-of-sale icons at all the locations. The funny thing we did is we kind of added humility to these presidents by giving them all sandwich boards, and gave these point-of-sale figures the ability to be refreshed with different themes throughout the year. We designed all the point-of-sale pieces as big metal displays that we could add magnetic accents to, depending on whatever the seasonal promotion was. Not only have the presidents proven to be extremely effective at point-of-sale (where, like I said, tens of thousands of dealers congregate each week at these sales across the country), we’ve also been able to use them as a creative device in e-mails, viral marketing, direct mail and collateral, and they’ve been especially effective in internal incentive programs among sales representatives for the MAFS organization.
Which presidents did you use?
KP: The ones that we felt kind of made the best combination were Abe Lincoln, George Washington and Andrew Jackson. And we added some personalities where George and Andrew are kind of the straight men, and Abe is kind of our over-the-top, humorous character. And between the three of them, we’re able to create a dialogue that conveys all the best selling features of the MAFS credit line.
How did you go about finding the voice talent?
KP: That was one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole thing, was the discovery of these three individuals who work so well together on all of our promotional messaging. We wanted them all to be able to convey a humorous combination of presidential dignity, and the humility of having to actually go out and promote that they’re ready to go to work. When you listen to three of them talk to each other, you really get the feeling that you’re listening to a good comedy act.
Do you think that’s something that helped this campaign become such a big success? The injection of humor?
KP: Definitely. The most fun of all is our comedic character, Abe. He’s so over the top, and his enthusiasm and his ego… He actually has to be restrained by the two straight men.
This campaign won your agency the prestigious AMY (Atlanta Marketer of the Year) Award. What was that like?
KP: Winning the AMY Award was just the icing on the cake. We already felt fantastic that we had helped the client exceed all their expectations and meet all their sales goals, and to be able to put a case study together and have it recognized by our peers was really a pleasure – especially that we were able to take Top of the Category in our specialty, business-to-business marketing. That has really helped us confirm our position as “Atlanta’s leading idea launch pad for business-to-business marketers.”
And what’s next for these characters?
KP: The fun thing that we’re working on right now is kind of a parallel to the election.
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