Getting creative ideas past the detractors

One of the greatest challenges facing creative marketers is the people in your company who pour cold water on your latest great idea. How many fantastic campaigns have never got off the drawing table because of some risk-averse commercial person? Or because of an overly circumspect board?

This week, my team has come up with a fantastic campaign that builds on the feel-good factor that pertains in the country, post-Olympics – a campaign that makes a virtue of the Britishness of our brand. We had flowing Union Jacks, adorned with our logo, and a host of supporting material. Everyone loved it until someone pointed out that our business operates in the UK and Ireland and the Irish do not always take kindly to a Union Jack.

But does this caution matter?

I came across an interesting blog this week that asked how many people read the pop-up windows that appear when you download the latest software upgrade to your laptop, or make an online purchase? How many people just hit “accept” or “agree” and move on? Or the mailings from your bank or credit card company with pages of updated terms and conditions that the cover letter suggests you don’t need to worry about, so you ignore and either shred it or throw it in the back of a drawer?

My understanding as to why we have updated terms and conditions, and the reason the banks/credit card companies/telephone suppliers have to spend what I would imagine is a lot of money sending them to us, is because the so-called consumer bodies have insisted that said organisations must send them to ensure we are fully protected.

But, and this is my contention, are these pages of small print really in the interests of the consumer? Some run to 15,000 words or more, often in the “plainest of English” so that they are unreadable to a normal human being. Or are they there to protect the institution that issued them for any eventuality? In whose interest do they serve? For example, think about this: you don’t actually have the right to negotiate or vary them, do you?

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Ruth Mortimer

Davie should consult marketing 101 to repair BBC

Ruth Mortimer

For the first time in its history, the BBC is being run by a marketer. Tim Davie, the acting director general, is not an old-school journalist who has worked his whole career at White City. He is a career marketer from the school of Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo, who has now been asked to step up to the kind of crisis management situation that most brands dread.