The Maple Leaf Farms duck farm wanted to send high-value swag to 50 executive chefs at high-end restaurants to encourage them to book an all-expenses paid tour to its headquarters to learn why they should add duck to their menus.

Instead of slapping its logo on some merch, we designed and produced 50 hand-cut wooden puzzles, customized with the logo of each executive chef's restaurant. (And yes, we stayed within the original budget.)

We packaged it up real fancy and mailed it. But we withheld the one puzzle piece that held the whole thing together. We did send a nice explanatory note from the company president.

In the note, the chefs learned that all they had to do to get their missing duck piece was to give Maple Leaf Farms a call. (We even convinced the president to include his personal cell number).

We weren’t jerks, though. Two weeks later, we sent out a follow-up note to the non-respondents, along with the missing piece.

Within the first two weeks, 11 of the 50 chefs called about the missing pieces. In addition, the piece won The Garrigan Lyman Group an Addy Award. The takeaway: you can’t reach everybody, but you can reach somebody!