Creepy or Clever Marketing? Porsche dealer puts your house in direct marketing material

AutoBlog: Creepy or Clever Marketing? Porsche dealer puts your house in direct marketing material

Click to watch videoPfaff Auto in Toronto, Canada has taken credit for creating the world's first piece of instant direct mail – a variation on the regular direct mail that goes from the doorstep straight to the waste basket. The dealership took a white Porsche 911 Carrera S to well-monied Toronto neighborhoods and photographed it in front of various homes.

A print production crew in a cargo van nearby then took those photos and, right on the spot, created individual postcards using each photo that invited homeowners to a test drive. It then delivered the postcards to mailboxes, saving potential buyers from having to merely imagine a Porsche in their driveways. You can watch how they pulled it off in the video above..

This isn't the kind of marketing play you'd be likely to pull off in America, what with the guns, gates and armed guards, but it worked a treat in Toronto. Traditional direct-mail response is usually in the low single digits, but Pfaff's response rate to the "It's Closer Than You Think" campaign was 32 percent.