Why my favourite newsletter is a black & white photocopy
How Oddbox’s newsletter gets the right content to the right people at the right time, despite (or because of) its unorthodox format
My current favourite newsletter — which I read without fail — doesn’t need clever subject lines to get me to look at it. It doesn’t doesn’t compete with LinkedIn notifications and Amazon prompts for my attention. And its creators don’t need to analyse oodles of data to work out the best time to send it.
That’s because it’s made of paper, arrives in a cardboard box and is delivered at the same time as the product it’s marketing.
It comes from Oddbox, the ‘wonky fruit and veg’ people who have been swiftly hoovering up customers in London and the south-east of the UK for a few years. If you haven’t heard of Oddbox, this interview with one of the co-founders is a good primer, and refers to the letter I’m talking about.
In a nutshell, Oddbox sells boxes of fruit and veg via subscription. The company’s mission is to eliminate food waste by offering an alternative way for sellers to get their surplus/rejected fresh produce to customers. This opportunity exists because millions of tonnes of produce is wasted every year as a result of being the ‘wrong’ shape, size, etc for supermarkets, or because unforeseen circumstances (like freak weather or pandemics) result in surpluses.
My household signed up for Oddbox in 2020, and the newsletter in question arrives inside the box each time we get fruit and veg delivered. Here are four reasons I think it’s a modern masterclass in providing the right content to the right people at the right time.
1. It is perfectly-timed
You can’t really overestimate the power of being able to communicate with a customer at the exact time that they are most engaged with your product, without being intrusive.
When I say ‘intrusive’, I’m referring to interactions like annoying pop-ups that ask you to rate an app just as you’re in the middle of a task. Obviously we get why these exist, but it’s a continual tension that companies claim to put user experience first while also interrupting what users want to do.
Oddbox’s in-box newsletter naturally arrives at the exact same time as your groceries, because it’s in the same box. And as it’s a piece of paper, you can ignore it, put it aside for later, stick it to your fridge, etc.
But as any Oddbox customer knows, that moment when you open your new box is the closest a tired, excitement-deprived adult gets to Christmas outside of 25th December (especially during a pandemic). You know what kind of things will be in your box, but you don’t know exactly what will be in it — you don’t get to choose.
You subscribe to one of seven boxes of various sizes and combinations of fruit/veg, and you get what you’re given.
If you enjoy cooking, and are stimulated by the challenge of building your meals around what ingredients you’ve received, this is a huge part of the Oddbox appeal.
It’s unlike any other fulfilment interaction (unless you subscribe to other surprise-bearing boxes, of course). It is a fulfilment + surprise interaction. And with the surprise comes, yes, a certain amount of delight.
For customers who like to think of themselves as decent home cooks, it’s like the universe is offering a new set of challenges to prove it: “Go on then. What can you do with celeriac and chestnuts?”
And it’s at that point that you first interact with the enclosed newsletter, which brings me on to…
2. It tells unique stories
Oddbox decided to bet that if you buy a boxful of fresh produce, you might be interested in a) where that produce comes from, and b) why you’re receiving those exact items in a particular week.
The way they approach this boldly distinguishes them from the supermarkets who comprise their competition (and who they are gradually undermining).
Yes, your Sainsbury’s apples might say on the packet that they were grown by Jeff from Jeff’s Farm, but that’s about all you get.
What interests me about the language used in the letter is that it is very light on the aspirational, eco-chic buzzwords we’ve come to expect from ‘green’ brands (and which surely by now make our eyes glaze over)
Your Oddbox letter often explains why you’re receiving apples from Spain and why they’re in your fruit bowl rather than your local supermarket’s shelves. For example: a freak hailstorm damaged their cosmetic appearance, which means supermarkets deem them unsellable, which means the producer would probably have ended up binning them, which means Oddbox purchased them and brought them to you instead.
I can’t get enough of these peeks into the supply chain dynamics behind the stuff we receive. It exposes me to stories I’m confident I wouldn’t get anywhere else, unless I suddenly got the urge to subscribe to grocery trade magazines (no thanks). And there are sometimes several stories like this with each letter.
They’re not long stories — just anecdotes that inform you about the peculiarities and challenges of supply and demand when it comes to fruit and vegetables. Sometimes they come alongside educational snippets about particular fruit/veg, and there’s usually a decent supply of cringe-inducing food-related puns. (This week: “That’s shallot of information for one letter…”)
What interests me about the language used in the letter is that it is very light on the aspirational, eco-chic buzzwords we’ve come to expect from ‘green’ brands (and which surely by now make our eyes glaze over).
There’s little use of words like ‘sustainable’, ‘organic’,’sourced’ or indeed ‘eco-’. It’s almost as if the letter is written by a regular human, for regular humans.
Which brings me to the sign-off. This part of the letter is always signed ‘Gav, Head of Operations’. I’ll admit the cynical, marketing-poisoned part of my brain suspected Gav of not actually existing, but some cursory LinkedIn-ing suggests this is he. So whether or not the copy goes through 23 rounds of approvals, you can be confident that the stories themselves come from the engine room.
(The content strategist in me wonders if Gav needed much coaxing to get involved with the letter. I’m sure he had enough to do already. Regardless, this is a great example of using a subject matter expert’s unique knowledge to create compelling product storytelling.)
Even if you could get these stories elsewhere, they wouldn’t be unique to the stuff you are unpacking in your kitchen at that exact moment. Which brings me on to…
3. It delivers relevant content
There is no shortage of recipes out there, and you can access more of them now than at any time in human history. But Oddbox is able to provide you recipes with the knowledge of what ingredients you have — because they provided them.
I don’t know if supermarkets are doing this. I would expect so, given how effectively they now hoover up data. But while I have had deliveries from Sainsbury’s or Tesco’s, I tend not to sign up for their newsletters. They might offer content that is relevant to me but I assume they’re also full of promotions and stuff around their loyalty schemes, and I can’t be bothered with all that.
But if I’ve just opened my Oddbox and am wondering what the hell to do with beetroot this time, a beetroot recipe in the newsletter is timely and relevant.
Also relevant is the list of produce included in that week’s boxes, some of which you may/may not have received depending on your subscription level. This presents itself as a guide on how to store your groceries, but it’s also quite an effective prompt to upgrade your subscription if you’re on a lower plan, because you can see what you’re not receiving.
For example, you might realise that if you subscribed to a larger box, then you’d have received mango this week. Small fry in the grand scheme of things, but if you’re stood there cursing your beetroot, that mango starts to sound pretty darn sweet (literally and figuratively).
It’s also worth noting that with this much relevant content, there is no real need for personalisation as we have come to know it. Sure, they could put ‘Dear Stuart’ at the start, but would I care?
This letter by no means represents Oddbox’s only content marketing efforts. There’s a weekly email newsletter, ‘The Oddbox Weekly’, which includes relevant recipes and also a downloadable meal plan. Then there are the usual social media presences, with contests for taking part in their #vegpledge, recipe ideas, etc.
But their investment in these more traditionally modern channels means a letter that looks like a fanzine stands out even more. Which brings me on to…
4. Its format is unusual (for a modern brand)
It’s an A5, black & white, photocopied pamphlet. It often features quite dense paragraphs, and it doesn’t have any pictures.
It feels somewhat rough and ready, which, intentionally or not, fits nicely with the fact that it comes packaged alongside potatoes that might still have splodges of earth attached, or carrots with stems, or tangerines with stalks.
It could totally be an email. And given Oddbox’s 2020 fundraising, and ambitious plans to go national, it may yet turn into an email.
I love that while there is a marketing component to it, it doesn’t *feel* like marketing.
I suspect the paper format works cost-wise for now because a) everyone gets fruit & veg from the same ‘bundle’, with minimal options for customisation, which means b) everyone gets the same newsletter. If and when more customised options are brought in, the costs of similarly customising the accompanying communications might mean paper no longer makes sense.
Which would be a shame. The paper format stands out not only for its content and its timeliness, but because it’s so unlike many of the communications we receive these days. It’s not competing with emails, or app notifications, or even direct mail.
I love that while there is a marketing component to it, it doesn’t feel like marketing. This is in part because it is no one thing. It’s a user guide (‘here’s how to store your vegetables’), a recipe book (‘here’s what to do with your sodding beetroot’) and a sort of provenance/logistics blog (‘here’s why you’ve got purple carrots and where they came from’).
And it’s this mishmash of unique, relevant and timely content that means it achieves the holy marketing grail: it feels, and is, authentic. It has the benefit of not needing to try too hard to get you to do anything — because you’re already doing it.
This isn’t a sponsored article but I would be remiss if I didn’t include my Oddbox referral link. Get £10 off your first Oddbox delivery (UK only for now) by signing up at: https://mention-me.com/m/ol/gw6xl-stuart-waterman
Newly vegetarian? Check out my tips for fighting food blandness after quitting meat.
