John West Direct Mail
When direct mail bites harder than advertising.
This was an award-winning direct mail pack created for John West, hand-made by myself and art director Simon Rowlands.
The pack was developed to run in parallel with a high-profile TV campaign featuring a shark, and the direct mail leaned fully into that creative territory to maximise impact with supermarket buyers. Rather than relying on print alone, we created a highly tactile, theatrical piece of trade communication that physically embodied the scale and confidence of the product launch.
Each pack took the form of a metal tin, containing shark teeth–inspired elements and a branded shark bottle opener, reinforcing both the campaign idea and the investment John West was putting behind the launch. The intent was simple: to make buyers feel the weight of the brand’s media spend and ambition before they ever read a word of copy.
Despite being a relatively simple media direct mail in strategic terms, the execution made it impossible to ignore — and it went on to become a finalist at the Direct Lions at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
A great example of how bold physical craft, aligned tightly with above-the-line advertising, can turn direct mail into something genuinely memorable, and commercially persuasive.