I never thought much of email campaigns. So imagine my surprise when I found out The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board had written an entire piece inspired by our Waste Management promotion. Then I saw the numbers on our client's ROI. Now I'm a believer. Check out the article below.

Winter exercise: Bend. Toss. Repeat. Chicago Tribune, 2014

The perfect post-holiday gift to yourself is not at the mall. It's not a new scarf or a spiffier iPhone.

It's a giant dumpster.

For several weeks leading up to Christmas, Waste Management, Inc. sent emails offering a December special of a $25 gift card for those who rented a dumpster. (Memorable advertising hook: "Forget stockings. Stuff a dumpster instead.") We shrugged and plowed ahead with our holiday plans.

Then came the gifts. Then came the moment when we, like millions of others, had to figure out where to store the latest booty. All available space was already taken. Possessions burst from drawers, swelled storage spaces, littered corners.

That's when the epiphany clanged home: What better gift for post-Christmas than a 22-foot-long, 30-cubic-yard green metal dumpster in the driveway?

Have you spent days marooned at home in a snowdrift? Cooped up because of subzero cold? Great! This is a ideal time for a pulse-raising purge. You don't necessarily need a dumpster, of course. You just need some resolve to resist your inner hoarder.

The inner hoarder says: That (fill in the blank of some outdated or broken or well-worn item in your home) is still pretty good. I may need it someday. I could get parts to fix it ...

This is how your crawl space got so full that you can't crawl in it. This is why you contemplate renting an off-site storage locker.

The inner hoarder is strong. But: Resist! Purge! Donate to charity. Sell on eBay. Invite neighbors to rummage through your dust-laden tools and stacks of books taking up precious space in the garage. (Yes, we did that).

Be ruthless. Get it out of your home or apartment.

You will feel better.

We're not suggesting that you need to pare all your belongings to a magic number, as some zealots urge. But we do suggest you cast a cold eye on all you've accumulated. If the item in question has been moldering untouched for five years, you do not need it. That goes quintuple for the pasta-making machine you haven't used in 27 years.

All those old flip phones (and their power cords!) from the pre-smartphone era? Someone could use those phones. That someone is not you. Maybe a women's shelter can repurpose them as emergency call devices.

Ditto for out-of-date cameras, cam-corders, VCRs (ask your grandfather), and clothing carefully preserved on hangers in the closet, like museum artifacts, untouched for seasons. Also home appliances and tools that appeared briefly or never emerged from the box.

Force your kids to whittle down that trail of school papers and — sigh — art projects. Threaten total destruction. Otherwise, they'll be 30 and your basement will still host that model volcano and, inexplicably, every grade school math test they ever took.