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would have signed off on someone who had just mispronounced their brand name. But it resulted in our ‘Did you mean Mailchimp?’ campaign and secured our place in pop culture.
You once described the ‘Did you mean Mailchimp?’ campaign as reckless. What did you mean?
It was a period of wandering in the desert for us. We wanted to introduce the real Mailchimp to the world, and that meant being our true self in a very weird and ‘Mailchimpy’ way.
It was reckless because we didn’t want to feel like a sell-out. Many of our customers had been with us from the beginning, so we wanted to remain true to them but go big and introduce ourselves to the world. We knew we were on to something special when the ‘Did you mean Mailchimp?’ concept made everyone feel uneasy.
What happened after ‘Did you mean Mailchimp?’
We had created this crazy world where dogs are covered with kale and shrimp sandwiches come to life, but felt that we needed to tell a bit more of our story.
We developed the ‘Black Hole’, which tapped into the very real and human emotion that sometimes marketing feels like throwing money into an abyss. We wanted to acknowledge how hard running a small business can be, while inspiring SMEs to keep going.
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