Marketreach, the planning, creative and design service launched by Royal Mail in 2012, has launched the Mailmen campaign to promote The Private Life of Mail, a report on the role of mail in people's lives based on 18 months of in-depth research.

The campaign features endorsements from: Robert Senior, worldwide chief executive, Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Group; Karen Blackett OBE, MediaCom chief executive; Nik Roope, founder of Poke; Elspeth Lynn, executive creative director, M&C Saatchi; and David Robinson, sales and marketing director for The Sun newspaper.

Jonathan Harman, managing director of Royal Mail Marketreach, said: "We are pleased to have marketing industry leaders join forces with us to demonstrate the vital role mail plays in today's digital world. In today’s rapidly transforming media landscape, brands and consumers are communicating in more diverse ways than ever.

"Over the past 18 months, we have conducted a series of research projects to understand exactly what that means for consumers and what it means for advertisers. It is an unprecedented look at what happens to mail when it enters the home which is why we have called it The Private Life of Mail."

The research programme included: analysis of 1,000 academic articles; telephone and online quantitative surveys of 9,504 respondents; 14 focus groups and 99 in-depth interviews; and neuroscience and tactility studies featuring 163 and 50 participants respectively.

Marketreach also conducted an ethnographic study of 12 households, from which it collected more than 800 hours of CCTV footage and 24 filmed in-depth interviews, as well an ROI analysis of 416 cases from the IPA Effectiveness Awards Databank and 401 from the BrandScience Results Vault (each case of which comprises a year's worth of data from one client).

The key findings from the research have been combined into a mail piece, making the case for direct mail as an essential part of any campaign, which has been posted to around 14,000 marketers and creatives. The campaign will also run across digital, press and OOH channels.

Research partners involved in compiling the report included BrandScience, David Brennan (Media Native), Decode Marketing, Neuro-Insight, independent consultant Peter Field, Quadrangle and Trinity McQueen.

The full report can be downloaded from the www.mailmen.co.uk website.

Meanwhile, Royal Mail is on the hunt for a new chairman after it was announced that Donald Brydon is set to step down later this year.

The Private Life of Mail

• 39% of people have a dedicated display area in their home where they keep mail, while an average of 23% of all mail is shared between people in a household
• The average length of time mail is kept in the household is 17 days for advertising mail, 38 days for door drops and 45 days for bills and statements
• 57% of people said receiving mail made them feel more valued, while 60% said that the best advertising mail helped keep the sender's brand at the forefront
• IPA Effectiveness Awards Databank analysis showed that campaigns including mail were 27% more likely to deliver top-ranking sales performance and 40% more likely to deliver top-ranking acquisition levels versus campaigns without mail
• The total communications ROI for BrandScience client cases that included mail was 12% higher than those that didn't
• The neuroscience study found evidence of TV having a priming effect on mail. Those seeing mail after a TV ad were more strongly stimulated on the key measurements of engagement, emotional intensity and long-term memory encoding