The Danish advertising agency Director A/S is a creative direct marketing agency with a focus on print and online response-marketing, and they work with the newest technology in their production.

In a competitive market where consumers move quickly, businesses constantly demand for new tools to retain customers and to help in creating both additional sales for existing customers and new relationships which in itself can lead to new sales.

All competences in solving large direct marketing campaigns can be found in-house, from strategy to production.  Director A/S' solutions therefore broaden over everything from offer brochures to search engine optimisation.  The goal is the same: Customers should feel the effect of the effort!

Broad, effective offers
Director A/S offers its services on all levels within direct marketing, strategically, tactically and operationally.  The goal is to create simple solutions which are operational and measurable.  In short: converting strategy to effective communication.
    
Primary focus is on direct marketing: direct e-mail, e-newsletters, online surveys, landing pages, response advertising, sales catalogues, sales brochures, home-delivered advertising, etc, and in automated production in the manufacture of print and online material in connection with large production tasks.    

Amongst Director A/S' customers are Leasy, Alka Forsikring, D:E:R, Egmont Serieforlaget and Egmont's Videoklubber, publishers Lindhart og Ringhof, Torn and others.

Director A/S knows their job, which has been proven recently when they won the DM Award 2009 in the Low Cost category with a campaign for Kristeligt Dagblad.    

Message, target-group and channels
Director A/S helps customers to determine what the goal is with a direct marketing campaign, what the offer is and what the budgets is, or should be.  In this way, agreement on the goal and resources is made, before planning preparation for a campaign starts.

Ahead of this, a test of message and content can help create the basis for a qualified assessment of the campaign's extent.  When the goal is to achieve the most effective result of the joint endeavours, a good knowledge of the customers target group is important.  Who should be influenced and how do we get to them?

Director A/S assists the customer to choose, segment and find the people or households in the target group who should be influenced.  The customer's budget determines which media-channels should be chosen, a complete direct mail campaign, an insert in a weekly magazine or banners on the internet.

Director A/S helps in choosing the solution that gives customers the widest possible contribution margin.  After completing a creative presentation and implemented corrections and approval, the agency manages the total production.    
    
How do they do this?
Director A/S' technical director Troels Fiig explains that when you produce printed catalogues, sales pamphlets and electronic newsletters to demanding customers within consumer sales, you need the right technological solutions.  He says:
    -    When the company was only two years old, we got a large and complicated task which we could not solve at the time.  I then became aware that it was necessary to have a form of automation in some of the tasks connected with the production.  As I had heard about Cacidi Systems, our choice landed quickly on their LiveMerge solution.
    -    It has now been three years since we made the investment to use the system for automation of the preliminary work in our printed matter, but we also use it for the production of electronic newsletters.
    –    Before now, everything happened the old-fashioned way, where we cut data out of Word and Excel and pasted them into InDesign.  Now our customers themselves update a database with the data to be used to the current project, and when the time is right they deliver a file with the data need for the production of their publication.
    –    Data can be in the form of XML files, Excel files or other types.  The main issue is that products with text, pictures, prices and other elements are listed, so that they can be loaded into our system.  We get text from customers translated via an agency and when the customer has approved the presentation, the rest is easy.
    –     A big advantage of the system is in switching language.  If we already have the Danish version in place, it is a relatively simple operation to change the Danish text to Norwegian, or whichever language is in question.
    
Saves from 50-70 percent
    -    The electronic newsletters we make for some customers also include offers with pictures of products, prices, text, pieces of graphics and possibly a price-splash with "then and now" prices.  The pictures can vary in size, but we work with a standard layout, so templates can be made for them.
    -    In some tasks, data extraction is done with the help of Encode retail, which extracts out data files e.g. for use in online shops. Overall, many tasks are totally eliminated and that gives more time for consideration about how the products can be improved and developed. Unless we let the savings in time be passed on to our customers who, in that way, get shorter productions times.
    -    We have saved 60-70 percent in completion time of newsletters which is closely connected to the automation, and if we had not had Cacidi LiveMerge we would've had to have twice as many people on some of the printing tasks we have completed in the previous years.
    -    Cacidi's system runs really well and we are very pleased with it.  We receive good treatment and a good service from them.  If we have a problem or unanswered question, it is dealt with immediately.  We do not need to go through an in-call direction system or answer a lot of irrelevant questions, but can directly contact the developer or another trouble-shooter when needed.  This is something we are very satisfied with, states Troels Fiig the Technical Director at the advertising agency Director A/S.