Mailchimp’s New Rebranding Effort Celebrates Other Businesses That Have Also Outgrown Their Names

You probably know Mailchimp as a handy “set it and forget it” email marketing tool.

You might even remember last year’s campaigns from Droga5 and the podcast Serial, in which people famously tried and failed to pronounce the brand’s name.

Mailchimp has, simply, outgrown its moniker. And it hopes to help other small businesses do the same by offering much more than basic email. In fact, its services now encompass everything from custom landing pages, postcards and ad campaigns to audience management.

Rather than change its own name, Mailchimp launched a new campaign called “More Than Mail” in partnership with R/GA that uses art, instead of the usual graphs and charts, to bypass the jargon and get to the core of its message: helping small businesses connect to their customers.

Beyond the digital video, the campaign also includes out of home, print, social and audio components as well as a full-length essay in The New Yorker.

The agency team commissioned more than 100 illustrations and turned to a series of digitally focused artists like Franz Lang and Amber Vittoria to help create videos providing the visual identity for the campaign. The suite of digital videos was produced by Vancouver firm Giant Ant.

It also redesigned Mailchimp.com to allow for a smoother user experience.

It’s all a bit more compelling than the standard spiel about targeting, optimization and response rates. And in case you’re curious, the company continues to work with Droga5 in addition to this project.

Patrick Coffee

@PatrickCoffee

Patrick Coffee is a senior editor for Adweek.