Mailchimp's New Wordplay Visualizations Are...Unexpected

But maybe the ads won't work? Or maybe they will? For the sake of the industry, let's hope they do.

You maybe remember Mailchimp’s name recognition launch campaign from five years ago, including: MailShrimp (singing mailroom shrimp); KaleLimp (wet kale dog); and JailBlimp (blimp piñata jailbreak).

The “email marketing and automation platform” is back with more executions in the same vein: Yes, it’s an actual ongoing campaign from a brand—an absolute fucking novelty nowadays.

As of right now (Sunday night), Mailchimp has only posted shorter teaser versions of the :30 spots on YouTube (and Vimeo). They’re trying to create “buzz”. And while that pisses me off, here I am posting about the campaign.

The creative “jokes” are intact. The tagline is Guess Less, Sell More. The hard sell line in the full versions is “Some things keep you guessing. Mailchimp takes the guesswork out of email marketing”.

Below are three of the teasers. (Mailchimp hasn’t yet posted a teaser of my favorite from the campaign: Cat-Owl-Bat.)

Sandal-Which-Witch

Here, first you see a sandwich, then sandal-wichs, then a witch wearing sandal-wichs. Didn’t see that coming.

Cuckoo-Koo-Koo-Clock

Here, you end up seeing a cuckoo clock inside of a cuckoo clock inside of a cuckoo clock inside of a cuckoo clock (that’s four cuckoo clocks, see below). Which is just fucking cuckoo.

a very tiny 4th cuckoo clock (far right).

Jelly Roll-ers

A jelly roll, yum, turns out to be a jelly roller, yuck.

Tasty ‘do

The hard sell line on these teasers is “Guess less with your marketing. Sell more with Mailchimp”.

While the bizarrely interesting visuals lead to the benefit, I worry that the creative focus on the negative—guessing—will leave potential customers unconvinced of the positive. Because with this campaign, even in the :30 versions, Mailchimp is basically just saying that they take the guesswork out of marketing. Which is a massive claim, because marketing is mostly based on guesswork. Sorry MBAs, all that studying, I know.

But, I hope it works for Mailchimp. Because we need more unexpected creative like this. Ad agency: Wink Creative (in-house).