Why such a small list?

I promised to tell you why we chose to only mail 550 company directors to launch the Park Hyatt Sydney. They were mainly Sydney based as well.

We did our homework and at the time the cross-board membership in Australia's top echelon companies was so strong - everyone sitting on everyone else's board - that we calculated we could hit 2000 boards by targetting 550 directors. As the senior corporate traveller (inbound) was our core target, we felt the local senior corporates would WOM (word of mouth) them for us. And they did. The Hyatt opened at 75% occupancy during the "Recession We Had To Have" - ahead of the Regent's suite levels in both occupancy and rack rate. Unheard of.

The night we were assembling the mail pieces - at a total cost of $120 per impact - I took the client (Willi Martin) aside and confessed to him that I didn't think it was going to work. (What ad agency would do that?) I'd spent his budget on 550 people. And I was afraid it wouldn't work.

"Oh, it will work, Michael," he said in his melodic Swiss-German accent.
"I know it will work.".... And willi was right. Three mail bags full... And an award from the US direct marketing association (who cares?)

(For those who have joined us in the last few days - and new members are coming in at a dozen a day - I reproduce the episode below.

Cheers!

Michael Kiely