Last October I received a call from a client asking me to produce a very unique direct mail piece. I’ve seen and produced just about everything under the sun but this one was in a category by itself. Their client needed a promotion that would encourage difficult to reach executives to take a meeting about their innovative software. You can imagine how difficult it is to get the attention of C level retail executives to talk about new software. The program needed to be timely and of the style that just could not possibly get ignored. The basic task was to create a luxury faux Cristal Champagne gift box and package inside it an empty champagne bottle that was similar to the real bottle of Cristal. It needed to deliver right after Black Friday so getting everything designed, produced and shipped was a challenge.

This project was really a spoof. Send a very fancy gift wrapped bottle of champagne to an executive. On the front of the box was attached a note praising them for all the good work they just accomplished and it was time to celebrate. Unless they were familiar with the real Cristal gift box that they would likely be fooled not realizing the brand was purposely misspelled as “Cristall.” Upon opening the box they find a bottle wrapped in the signature cellophane wrap Cristal comes in but the bottle is empty. Once they pull the bottle out there is a personalized brochure with the headline “It’s hard to drive ROI when your customer experience is a total letdown.” The brochure concludes with, Take a call about our platform to get the very best experience: a real bottle of Cristal. So the question is: If you were offered a $230 bottle of the world’s best Champagne would you take the sales meeting.

The box was constructed of a 60# chip board with a magnetic closure, then wrapped with a metallic gold paper that had been screen printed with their logo. We used a sparkling wine maker to assemble the empty bottle insert the cork, install the cage & gold foil top then apply the custom “Cristall” label. The brochures were digitally printed since each were personalized. The box was then giftwrapped with gold wrapping paper and a gold bow then placed into it shipping carton. We made this job easy for the print production manager by handling all of the details and coordinating 5 different vendors to get this job dome in a timely fashion. They were very pleased.

Take a look at this video that demonstrates the actual presentation.
I write a column called Wine Notes for the Merrimack Valley Magazine and featured Cristal Champagne since I was working on this printing project. Check it out: https://www.mvmag.net/2020/02/03/champagne/