Services – Printing, Mailing and Distribution

Overview

Moorfields, the corporate recovery company, appointed Black&Callow to disseminate information regarding Blockbuster’s administration to its 68,000 creditors, employees and members in 2013. The task entailed an initial communication at the end of 2013 followed by a subsequent one in 2015 to all creditors, employees and members, by mailing and distributing a combination of hard copies and email copies.

Challenge

At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster had 60,000 employees and 9,000 stores worldwide with a market value of $5 billion and revenues closer to $6 billion. However, as competition from online streaming and on-demand rental sites proved too tough to weather, the firm went into administration in 2013 followed by the UK business closing 62 stores with a loss of hundreds of jobs by the end of December that year.

Black&Callow were appointed by Moorfields Administrators to communicate with Blockbuster’s 68,000+ creditors, employees and members following Black&Callow’s proven experience on high-profile administrations such as Lehman Brothers, Enron, MG Rover and Polly Peck.

Black&Callow's Solution

For the 2015 distribution, part of the brief involved reducing costs as much as possible to ensure a greater return to creditors. To achieve this, the process was split into a hard copy mailing, simultaneously accompanied by a soft-copy emailing.

With the aim of reaching as many of the creditors, employees and members in the fastest and most cost-effective way, Black&Callow took an XLS file containing details of the 68,000 recipients and split them into creditors, employees and members, before sub-splitting them for emails. The hard copy mailing data included postcodes which were ‘cleaned’ to ensure a greater chance of successful delivery. Early personalisation tests on the cleaned data, printed onto C5 envelopes, were then sent to the client for approval, all within 24 hours of initial receipt of the raw data. At the same time, a mass email was created with links to an embedded PDF containing the letter to creditors.

At 9am the following day, nearly 25,000 hard copies were mailed and emails sent to more than 43,000 addresses. Within a few hours, proof of Royal Mail postage was delivered back to the administrators, alongside detailed statistics of the email campaign, including the number successfully received, the number of opens and ‘click-throughs’ alongside recipient requests for further action.

The combined communication achieved a saving of over £15,000 in postage, printing and ancillary services compared to hard copy only mailing, ensuring that in due course more funds could be redistributed to creditors. 

How did Black&Callow add unrivalled value for the client?

  • The company’s proven experience in dealing with high profile administrations meant that staff were fully prepared to deal with the challenge quickly and efficiently.
  • Black&Callow were briefed with the aim that process costs should be reduced as much as possible; which was achieved with remarkable results.
  • Black&Callow tracked all consignments so Moorfields knew exactly how many hard and soft copies were successfully distributed, as well as gaining significant email campaign data.
  • Investment in technology meant that Black&Callow were equipped to deliver fast and versatile results on time.

moorfields black&callow logo Blockbuster black&callow logo