You need a little bit of fear to really push your ideas.
My last post was around looking for it. But once you’ve found the fear you need to embrace it to successfully manage the risks.
Years ago we created an ad so boring it actually annoyed people.
Luckily that was the point.
We wanted to put people into the awful mind-numbing space you go into when you’re actually doing DIY. Then reveal the product as the quickest and easiest way to get it over with.
That all sounds very logical. But it was insanely risky.
// What if it did just bore people?
// What if we’d blown the entire budget on a dud?
// What if the whole industry pointed and laughed?
// What if the client fired the agency?
// What if we got fired?
// What if we created the advertising equivalent of the Titanic? The ship not the movie.
Creativity needs bravery. It’s what we should be pushing for. And if you fail and people throw stones then that’s on them.
But after making your initial brave leap of creativity you need to make sure not to charge forward on blind faith. That’s just reckless.
All the way through the idea stages, development, production and even when the ad was airing we were thinking ahead and working out what was needed to make it a success. We found ‘almost’ every risk and eliminated them one by one, as one team - client, agency and media.
We put together a 3 month timeline that included a fully structured rollout, reactive influencer support, media relations and social war-room featuring a flow chart with 100s of pre-written tweets and responses. And as the rollout played out we adapted and adjusted.
Even with plans A, B, C, D, Etc… in place, I still felt physically sick 15 minutes before it aired. Would it sink or swim? Just like Jack and Rose in Titanic. The movie not the ship.
We didn’t lose our jobs. We trended, created national news and won loads of awards.
None of which would have happened if we’d not said ‘this could be great, but how do we make sure it works?’.
You can see find a bit more about ‘Ronseal Ad Break’ in the work section of my website . And there’s a few different case studies you can Google too.
