The primary audience for this new brand was key decision makers of 40 Marine Insurance brokers
throughout Australia. To target them, we created a tailored direct marketing piece. Our idea was to show an example of life without marine insurance. If cargo goes down in a storm, or if it’s lost due to pirates, there would be no safety net.
Imagine being able to touch a genuine piece of eight or an actual 17th century Spanish reale? We made that happen, by contacting a collector in New York who had 40 such shipwrecked coins that still had ‘character’. They were from the Sao Jose W, a Portuguese carrack from the 1600s. This vessel had the misfortune of being fired upon by more cannon balls than had ever been fired upon any single vessel before. As a result, 350 passengers and crew were lost that day.
Each book had a coin nailed onto the cover, which was made from oak barrels. We made the cover and back resemble a 400-year-old ship’s hull, with the curvature of the wood. The binding was created using a salvaged mooring rope with ends dipped in tar. This produced a wonderful creaking sound each time it was opened.
Each book was then aged, including corroding nails, even the gaps between each pale was waterproofed with ‘tar’.