“Did you mean…?”

The Situation: We needed to make get more people familiar with the brand  

MailChimp gained notoriety in 2014 when sponsoring the cult podcast, Serial, as the brand’s audio ad mispronounced its name – calling it “MailKimp’ instead of ‘MailChimp’.  This small mispronunciation became a meme, and took on a life of its own.

Taking advantage of this moment, the brand created a campaign around exactly that: stuff that sounds like the word MailChimp. Our goal was to deliver a brand campaign at scale, while retaining the brand spirit of authentic, cool and inspiring.

What We Did: We spun 9 creative activations into a web of discovery  

The creative team created nine new ways MailChimp could be mispronounced – MaleCrimp, KaleLimp, MailShrimp, FailChips, JailBlimp, VeilHymn, NailChamp, WhaleSynth, SnailPrimp – to create intrigue so that people would search to find out more and ultimately discover the creative spirit of MailChimp was behind the fun and weirdness.

Each of the nine projects was a cultural activation that needed a strategy and context of their own. We treated each as a brand in its own right, which essentially meant sub-strategies for each one, identifying the channels that would best bring it to life, and the media partners to make it credible.

And, to connect the dots between the nine executions, we created a search and retargeting structure to tie it all together.

What Happened: We created culture, rather than chasing it

After the campaign there was a 20% increase in awareness of MailChimp and an increase in overall affinity for the brand of +18%.

70% of people who saw the campaign said it gave them a better sense of MailChimp’s personality.

And, we drove $3.52M in earned media value