Kontor Records Mailed a Turntable to Win Over the Un-Impressibles
Kontor Records' "Back to Vinyl – The Office Turntable" is a 2013 direct-mail campaign created by OgilvyAction Düsseldorf and OgilvyOne Frankfurt that mailed a physical vinyl record inside an envelope designed to fold into a working paper turntable, allowing recipients to play Boris Dlugosch's new track "Look Out" by scanning a QR code with a smartphone.
Launched in Germany in April 2013, the campaign was conceived as a targeted promotional instrument aimed at a very specific and notoriously difficult audience: advertising agency creative directors. The challenge was not simply awareness but genuine engagement — convincing professionals whose entire working lives are spent evaluating and dismissing creative work to stop, interact, and listen. Rather than relying on digital notifications or conventional promotional inserts, Kontor Records chose to put something physical and tactile into 900 envelopes and trust that the object itself would do the persuading.
The campaign sits at the intersection of direct marketing, design craft, and entertainment promotion. Its mechanics are straightforward but deliberately so: the vinyl record is a cultural artefact with inherent nostalgic weight, the paper turntable transforms a passive mailer into an interactive prop, and the QR code bridges the analogue object to digital audio playback. In the German market in 2013, where streaming was beginning to reshape recorded-music consumption, this combination of old-format reverence and new-format utility carried a pointed message about the enduring resonance of vinyl. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100, reflecting its strong creative and strategic execution as assessed against global benchmarks.
Kontor Records identified advertising creative directors as the precise audience for this campaign. As documented by selfstorming.com and Tbrandedlife Wordpress, this group was explicitly characterised as "un-impressibles" — professionals so saturated with creative stimuli that conventional promotional materials register as noise rather than signal. Reaching them required not a louder message but a fundamentally different object.
The strategic logic is rooted in contrast. In 2013, the German and broader recorded-music market was undergoing a structural shift away from physical formats. According to mobiforge.com, digital revenue represented 39% of total recorded-music revenue globally that year, with subscription and advertising-supported streaming together accounting for 27% of digital revenue, up from 14% in 2011. Within this context of accelerating dematerialisation, a physical vinyl mailer carried the force of deliberate counter-positioning. Vinyl was not simply nostalgic packaging — it was a statement about craft, permanence, and attention in an industry increasingly defined by disposability.
Kontor Records, as a Hamburg-based independent label operating within Germany's competitive music landscape, needed to cut through to tastemakers and creative decision-makers who could amplify the Boris Dlugosch release beyond conventional promotional channels. By framing the campaign as a direct-mail piece addressed personally to 900 agency creatives across Germany, the strategy bypassed mass media entirely and placed the product — both the music and the mailer — directly in the hands of the people most likely to talk about it, award it, and remember it. The result was a campaign that functioned simultaneously as music promotion and as a demonstration of advertising craft.
The on-screen execution of "Back to Vinyl – The Office Turntable" centres on a single ingeniously designed physical object. A vinyl record arrives inside a mailing envelope; the envelope itself is printed and scored so that it unfolds and assembles into a miniature paper turntable. The vinyl record slots into this constructed turntable, and a printed QR code on the mailer, when scanned with a smartphone, streams Boris Dlugosch's track "Look Out" — completing the experience of playing a record without a needle or a motor.
The design demands precision at every stage. The paper turntable must be structurally convincing enough that recipients engage with the assembly process, and the QR code must be positioned and sized for reliable scanning in the context of a partly constructed paper object. As reported by mobiforge.com, the activation rate of 71% confirms that the physical design succeeded in motivating the target audience to complete the interaction — a result that speaks directly to the quality of the object's construction and the clarity of its instructions.
The creative team behind the campaign was led by Chief Creative Officer Stephan Vogel, with Executive Creative Directors Martin Seele and Uwe Jakob overseeing the work. Art direction was handled by Tobias von Aesch, Klaus-Martin Michaelis, and Esra Bueyuekdoganay, with technical direction from Jens Steffen, whose role was critical in ensuring the QR-code integration functioned reliably at scale. Copywriting credits belong to Martin Seele and Mike Bayfield. Account management was led by Annika Hake, with Hanna von Schultz heading project management. The campaign was produced across OgilvyAction Düsseldorf and OgilvyOne Frankfurt, two units whose combined expertise in direct marketing and digital engagement shaped both the physical and interactive dimensions of the work.
"Back to Vinyl – The Office Turntable" produced measurable results that are rare in direct-mail campaigns targeting a deliberately small and resistant audience. According to selfstorming.com and mobiforge.com, 900 turntable packages were distributed, and 71% of QR codes were activated. As further reported by mobiforge.com, that activation rate was 64% above the average response rate for comparable direct-mail executions — a figure that underscores the effectiveness of the physical object as an engagement mechanism rather than simply a creative novelty.
The campaign's award record is equally substantive. It won a Gold Lion in the Media Lions category for Use of Audio at Cannes Lions 2013, and a second Gold Lion in the Design Lions category for Graphic Design and Design Crafts: Promotional Item, as documented by selfstorming.com. In 2014, the campaign received a D&AD award for Digital Marketing, according to dandad.org, and a One Show award for Interactive, as reported by selfstorming.com. This four-award sweep across disciplines — media, design, digital, and interactive — reflects a campaign that achieved genuine cross-category creative excellence rather than strength in a single dimension.
No broader sales data or streaming figures for the Boris Dlugosch release are publicly available. The documented metrics — activation rate, comparative response uplift, and award outcomes — represent the verified record of performance for this campaign in the German market.
"Back to Vinyl – The Office Turntable" was a 2013 direct-mail campaign created by OgilvyAction Düsseldorf and OgilvyOne Frankfurt for Kontor Records in Germany. It mailed 900 envelopes, each containing a vinyl record and a paper turntable, promoting Boris Dlugosch's track "Look Out" via a QR code for smartphone playback.
The mailing envelope was designed to fold and assemble into a miniature paper turntable. Recipients placed the enclosed vinyl record onto the constructed turntable, then scanned a printed QR code to stream Boris Dlugosch's "Look Out" on their smartphone, combining analogue form with digital audio playback in a single tactile object.
The campaign won two Gold Lions at Cannes Lions 2013: one in the Media Lions category for Use of Audio and one in the Design Lions category for Graphic Design and Design Crafts: Promotional Item. It also received a D&AD award for Digital Marketing and a One Show award for Interactive in 2014.
According to mobiforge.com, 71% of QR codes in the 900-piece mailing were activated. That rate was 64% above average for comparable direct-mail campaigns, as reported by mobiforge.com, confirming the physical turntable design succeeded in driving genuine interaction among the targeted creative director audience in Germany.
Chief Creative Officer Stephan Vogel led the Ogilvy Germany team. Executive Creative Directors Martin Seele and Uwe Jakob oversaw the work, with art direction by Tobias von Aesch, Klaus-Martin Michaelis, and Esra Bueyuekdoganay. Technical direction was handled by Jens Steffen, whose work was critical to reliable QR code integration across the mailing.
Kontor Records chose advertising creative directors as recipients because they represented a high-influence audience characterised, as documented by selfstorming.com, as "un-impressibles" resistant to standard promotional materials. Reaching this group in Germany with a genuinely surprising physical object offered greater amplification potential than conventional music-industry promotional channels available in 2013.
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