Commentary

Agency Searches For Santa With Elaborate Victorian-Era Expedition

With its holiday card effort, Indiana-based Miller Brooks has embarked upon an exploration and the discovery of hidden truths. The agency began by recruiting mission participants via a display ad patterned closely after Ernest Shackleton’s famous advertisement of 1914 which sought crewmen for the Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The ads appeared in the classified sections of local publications.

The agency next mailed clients and prospective clients a pseudo-Victorian map of the North Pole wrapped around a signed holiday greeting that did double duty as a teaser postcard by showing a photo of a Santa-esque figure posing with a ship’s crew, and directing readers to TheExpeditionNorth.com for further information. All the materials came enclosed in an envelope that displayed an ornate, period-appropriate return address stamp, along with vintage postage stamps, which in turn were selected to show scenes of ocean exploration.

Additional recipients were alerted to the mission and its Web site through a series of email messages -- one that echoed the print ad and included era-appropriate advertisements for several of Miller Brooks’ clients and a second communication that announced the mission’s launch on the front page of an invented Victorian newspaper, the Voyager’s Weekly: A Graphic Compendium of Travelogues.

When visitors arrive at TheExpeditionNorth.com, they are greeted by a summary of the voyage’s purpose, as well as a biography of the mission’s leader and a description of the Miller Brooks Society for Exploratory Illumination. A multi-part captain’s journal tells the story of the mission’s launch, travails, and eventual triumph in period-appropriate language accompanied by photoshopped images.

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