A load of old Barnum.

This morning I was woken up at 6am by my 12-year-old son tapping me on my head and saying: “Can I play Xbox?”. This is a common occurrence at the weekends. I especially like it when my 10-year-old daughter is sent in to wake me up, and does so by pulling my eyelids open before saying “Can I go on my tablet?” The answer is always: “You can go on screens at 7, go back to bed”. They know this, but they still tap my head or pull my eyelids. I’m not a good sleeper, so once woken up the best I can manage is Hypnagogia, the trippy like-state between wakefulness and sleep. I like this state. It’s when I have my best thought-starters, and why I always keep a notebook by my bed. I’m having a few days off at the moment so am actively trying not to think about the briefs in my inbox. Instead I directed my mind to the theme of “sleep”, which led me to think about the latest fantastic IKEA poster campaign (the one unbottling its products as sleep medicine – below), which led me to my favourite IKEA campaign, “Happiness Inside” (one hundred cats let loose in an IKEA store overnight to test the furniture – and who better than cats to demonstrate comfy sofas?), which led me to the theme of this post: ANIMALS. A convoluted and unnecessary introduction? Probably.

“Never work with animals or children” is an oft-used, but oft-misunderstood quote attributed to the old-time American comedian, WC Fields. Misunderstood because it wasn’t said to warn against the difficulties of working with animals and children, but to warn against the fact that animals and children always steal the show. I’ve worked on plenty of tactics that involve animals and it’s true, they provoke instant headlines, create genuine organic clicks (not factory-farmed-clicks), and are often a short-cut to delivering an otherwise hard-to-land branded message.

A few examples from my archives to prove the point… Elle “The Body” Macpherson’s dog, Bella “The Dog’s Body” Macpherson, as the face of dog fashion brand, Dogside; screening Twilight to wolves to mark the DVD launch of the film (I’m sure it already was, but having animals watching screens has become somewhat of a PR trope); flying betting odds over Celtic Manor using banner-carrying eagles and hawks for golf’s Ryder Cup (the Betfair Birdies caused quite a stir, albeit Paddy Power did sky-vertising properly two years later with its Sky Tweets stunt); hijacking the annual Superbrands list by parading Dulux dogs along Westminster Bridge and making sure our pictures stole the share of coverage even though the brand only came seventh (no rationale at all behind the Westminster Bridge location); hiring Bandai’s first security cat to “protect” the first UK shipment of ThunderCats toys; training ravens to deliver Alligiant films (‘cos a raven is the symbol of the main character, Tres, obvs); and coaxing a slug from a trained animal handler (we wanted to make sure we avoided any animal right’s criticism) to “pose” on an Amazon Kindle to promote ‘Sol the Slug’s Night Before Christmas’, the winning tale of a Kindle Direct Publishing competition to write a new Christmas Eve story.

From memory none of these tactics were easy to execute, but all delivered against their objectives and were deemed successful. Indeed, some even won awards. Looking at them all now you can clearly spot the formula; a pun, a picture, an animal-does-this-to-promote-that purpose. Nothing particularly strategic, nothing overly creative, and definitely purely tactical, not campaign-able. One that did have a bit more substance to it was “Feed Different” for Tails.com, the tailor-made dog food company, which believes in kibble-only diets for dogs. The idea worked for the brand, product and dog-owners who all see their pup as “different”. An unashamed pastiche of Apple’s “Think Different” for sure, but so brilliantly executed by filmmaker Gary Tarn that it stood alone. Convincing Sir Michael Gambon do the voiceover (he loves dogs) meant it generated a load of editorial coverage, but with no money for paid media, it was probably the right idea delivered at the wrong time for the brand.

So, my advice would be to never say never to working with animals as they do indeed steal the show, but do so knowing nine out of ten cats times it’s a one PR trick pony.

I’ve never really been one for self-promotion whether it be commenting in trade press, being a judge at awards or talking at events, mainly because I’ve always viewed it as slightly self-indulgent and a distraction from the actual job at hand, i.e. coming up with and delivering ideas for clients. However, I did recently say “yes” to an interview with Ben Smith on his PR Moment podcast. The reason being that I like Ben, admire what he’s doing, and personally got a lot from listening to previous interviews so thought it was the least I could do when asked. I didn’t really prep for it, and went off on slightly weird tangents at times, which may have been nerves or just because I was in a funny mood, but in general I think it went ok (the numbers are good apparently). I found myself listening back to the interview, taking notes and learning from my own monologue, which was odd, but ultimatley useful.

Anyway, I listen to a quite a few podcasts and thought it worth sharing my top five, not least because I’d like to do my bit in helping drive new listeners so the podcasters continue to keep on doing them. So, in no particular order:

1) JFDI
The story of Mills, a co-founder of ustwo Studios (making digital products), ustwo Adventures (investing in great companies), and ustwo Games (most famous for Monument Valley, the beautiful Escher-inspired videogame which my kids are obsessed with). He and his partner John(athon) “Sinx” Sinclair have recently stepped back from the day-to-day running of the group, which has resulted in Mills having the time to do a daily a podcast about whatever comes into his head from business, to ultra-running to parenting. The guy is an inspiration. So much so I’m now running every day, stopped drinking booze completely, and getting up even earlier than I used to excited about the creative opportunities ahead. I’d suggest starting with the business-focussed episodes with his co-founder, #Justhetwoofus, but “tangentiasing” quickly into every other one. The guy is a legend and a reminder that for all the talent you may have, nothing beats enthusiasm and JFDI-ing it.

2) DAVE DYE: STUFF FROM THE LOFT
Stylistically the complete opposite to JFDI, Dave Dye’s podcast is a long, considered analysis of the thinking behind some of the great advertising campaigns and executions from the industry’s best creative directors. I’m in awe of Dave and his encyclopaedic brain that collects and catalogues information, which is then applied to a fresh creative challenge. He deserves a medal for services to creative communication in my opinion and his blog and podcast are invaluable resources for anyone in the industry who wants to study their craft. He hasn’t posted a podcast for ages, but there’s a library of existing episodes and I’d recommend starting with (the recently retired) Ben Priest from adamandeveDDB, Graham Fink, previously of CDP, M&C Saatchi, Ogilvy and now artist (who draws with his eyes), and, of course, creative extraordinaire Mark Denton, who I once had the privilege of working with (in the PR Week award-winning THE BIG CALL for Telefónica), and is simply a hero of mine.

3) PR MOMENT
Most PR podcasts are a bit dry in honesty, but Ben manages to interview people who I think better reflect where the industry is at, and who want to talk about PR (not politics or advertising). I’d start with Graham Goodkind from Frank and Angie Moxham who recently left 3 Monkeys as both have great stories and insights to learn from. Obviously listen to mine too!

4) FEARLESS
Fearless, The Art of Creative Leadership, is from ex-pat Charles Day who talks to the leaders of the world’s most disruptive companies. The format is biographical, which I find inspirational/reassuring because you learn how people have connected the dots throughout their careers so even what seem like random decisions at the time end up guiding them to where they are now. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Mindy Grossman, CEO of Weight Watchers (a client of ours), Carl Johnson, the founder of Anomaly, and Nils Leonard, ex-Grey London chief creative officer and founder of new creative studio Uncommon.

5) REAL FAMOUS
Billed as a real life education in making brands that people want to talk about, it’s essentially about strategic planning and the ideas behind the ideas, which is very much what I’m into at the moment. Every one of the podcasts I’ve listened to has resulted in me buying and reading a new book so I’m definitely getting something from it. Highlights are Paul Feldwick, the genius ex-planning director at BMP and DDB, Russell Davies, one of the godfathers of planning on the internet and now at ustwo Studios, and Mark Earls, author and founder of the Herd Consultancy.

And as an extra, for pure listening pleasure, Josh Widdicome’s Quickly Kevin Will He Score takes a behind-the-scenes look at 90s football with laugh-out-loud funny results. It’s not work related, but sometimes the brain needs a bit of light relief, which is perfectly provided by characters such as Matt Le Tissier, Paul Merson and Frank Skinner.

Happy listening.

I’ve been clearing out a load of stuff recently and came across a book Mischief staff made me when I left the agency just over four years ago. I read it at the time, but had never really read it again as I’ve always been hyper conscious of not becoming too self-indulgent and, in all honesty, I’m not so good with compliments (a leaving book is full of nice words, not necessarily honest words!). Anyway, I thought I’d re-read it and see if I could learn anything from it.

One word that kept cropping up more than most was “determined”. And I’m pretty pleased that people thought/think that of me because deep down I know I’m not a “creative genius”, but I do know that when I have an idea, I have it within me to not stop until that idea is realised. Being determined with creative work does not necessarily make you popular because it usually means you’re always pushing yourself and others outside of the comfort zone. And the comfort zone is, well, comfortable. An agency can make nice work and a fair amount of money in the comfort zone. But the comfort zone is not really for me. Indeed, I like doing work that makes me slightly uncomfortable (as in, “can we really pull this off” uncomfortable), which has become an unofficial principle during my career, and one I hope I never lose.

Bill Bernbach, who should be everyone’s creative hero, said that “a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something”, and this was (very nearly) the case when we pitched an idea to Budweiser to mark its sponsorship of The FA Cup way back in 2011. The global beer brand had announced its sponsorship of the very domestic FA Cup and received a bit of a backlash due to its US heritage (i.e. “what do the Yanks know about football?” type stuff) and the fact it’s a booze brand. I thought The FA and the Budweiser global team could have handled the original announcement a bit better, but we were where we were and an emergency meeting was called for the domestic agencies to now figure out how now to strategically position the sponsorship and to start working up an activation plan.

We worked really well as an all-agency team and quickly came to what I think is still a brilliant positioning/promise/purpose that Budweiser would use its global reach to “Open up the magic of The FA Cup to football fans around the world”. “Open up” was a subtle reference to beer, “magic of The FA Cup” was the David v Goliath-anything-can-happen stories the tournament generated, and “to football fans around the world” was serving a global audience. The positioning was liked by The FA, which could see the commercial value of the previously-domestic tournament going global, and liked by the domestic and global Budweiser clients as they could see the sponsorship working hard for them across multiple territories.

With the positioning sorted, the creative brief was to come up with campaign that would demonstrate the purpose and launch around the time of the First Round in November when TV companies and national media started to take an interest in the tournament. So, a six-month run up to develop a campaign. Happy days.

Expect I knew that for many non-league clubs and their fans the “magic of The FA Cup” started with a series of qualification games before the First Round with the Extra Preliminary Rounds (six rounds before the first round) kicking off in August. And I thought it would be good to mark what we called “the very first kick of The FA Cup” with a Budweiser moment.

The idea was a simple one born straight out from the positioning. If Budweiser’s sponsorship was about “Opening up the magic of The FA Cup to football fans around the world” then we would do exactly that by broadcasting the very first kick to a global audience, live via Facebook, long before broadcasting video (and certainly live video) on Facebook was a thing.

I’d checked on the broadcast rights and there weren’t any for the Extra Preliminary Rounds (no TV company was interested in the very early rounds). I’d checked with Facebook. Well, I’d emailed them and heard nothing back so took that as a “yes, go ahead”. And I’d investigated the tech with the digital agency who didn’t say “no”. A quickly-put-together document was sent to the Budweiser client, the fantastic Iain Newell, and I followed up with a call to try and get the green light. The answer was a “no”. Although he gave us shed-loads of praise for a great idea and being proactive. I sulked for a day or two. To the absolute credit of my then boss, and now business partner, Mitch Kaye, he picked up the phone to sell the idea again. The answer shifted from a “no” to “I’ll ask the global team”. The global team didn’t kill the idea, but they made it clear that the big launch campaign was very important and if anything screwed it up then heads would roll. Iain phoned me back as I was standing on a platform waiting for a train home. The conversation went something like this: “Dan, you’ve caused me a right f*cking problem. I love the idea, but if it f*cks up then I’ll get fired. And make no mistake you’ll get fired too. Do you really want to do this?”. To be fair I sh*t myself a bit as on paper it was an unnecessary risk activating an idea that no-one had asked for. I bottled it and called Mitch to make the final decision. He told me to go for it. We were on for making broadcasting history.

The next day The FA gave me the fixture list with Ascot United FC v Wembley FC looking like the plum fixture of the Extra Preliminary Round. I called both clubs and promised them a global audience of over 700m fans on Facebook so they were game. And I called an outside broadcast specialist who were “can-do” people to take on the production job, but the budget wasn’t big enough for what was needed. A promise of a name-check in the press release and a place in broadcasting history brought them round, but we were now out of budget before we’d even started thinking about assets for publicity.

We had a brilliant team working on the account including Seb Dilleyston (now a Director at Hope & Glory), Matt Pynn (one of the funniest guys I’ve worked with and now in-house at Calloway Golf) and Neil Broderick (still working with me at The Academy) so I was confident. Matty and I took a visit to Ascot United’s ground to sort the logistics and after a lot of sighing by various football and technology people I was a little less confident. We settled on the most basic 3-camera set-up and an untested live feed format that would with technological wizardry convert footage into a file that could play through Budweiser’s UK Facebook page. Whilst I was there I took a load of pictures with my SLR camera, which were used to document the ground set-up, but ended up becoming the press pictures. I reported back to Iain who reported back that most of the other Budweiser territories wanted the game to be broadcasted through their local Facebook pages too. Added complication for the digital agency and more stress for the team who were feeling the heat of a tight turnaround, client demands and more and more problems coming out of the woodwork as the project developed. Proper “squeaky bum time” as one famous football manager once said. We cracked on regardless.

I felt we’d gone one hell of story so was excited to be selling it in. But once we’d started hitting the phones the reaction was at best lukewarm from sports and newsdesks. I couldn’t understand it and could only think that “traditional” media clearly didn’t like “new” media and were not happy to give Facebook any publicity. I called my best independent wire contact to see what he thought and if there was anything we could tweak to get it going. The best we could come up with was a non-committal line that if the broadcast was successful then we would not rule out further matches being shown on Facebook, which was enough to spark a bit of business commentary on whether sport on social networks would become the “next big thing”. My contact stuck out the print-ready copy late in the day straight to back benches who were kind enough to put it in without much editing. The next day coverage landed in The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun and on BBC News online. The initial business-led coverage then sparked more interest and we were off with tonnes of domestic and global news, sport and technology coverage appearing over the next few weeks as interest built for the event itself. Satisfyingly all the coverage included the positioning and applauded Budweiser and The FA for shining a light on the “magic of The FA Cup” by giving the very first kick the Hollywood treatment.

Much to my distress I had to fly to a wedding in Italy on the day of the match itself, but it was something I couldn’t really avoid, and the team assured me they had it. On the night of the game I was meant to be at a big dinner, but instead I made my excuses and found a quiet corner with a semi-decent Wi-Fi connection and watched Ascot United FC v Wembley FC on multiple Facebook pages. The stream worked like a dream. I was so happy for the team and so relieved that it had gone well and therefore hadn’t got fired. “Football on Facebook” was shortlisted for loads of awards, but never won anything, which is a shame as I thought it deserved it. Regardless of that, it’s probably something I’m most proud of. We had stuck to our principles and our sheer determination made a good idea happen. And, for me, an idea isn’t a good idea unless it actually happens.

I knew about Phineas T. Barnum from an early age as my brother and I had a couple of books about his “curiosities” including the Feejee mermaid, a creature with the head of a monkey and the tail of a fish, Monkey Boy, self-explanatory, and General Tom Thumb, the 99cm tall dwarf. However, it was only when I got into PR and began studying the discipline that I discovered Mark Borkowski’s book Improperganda, and Barnum forever more took on “creative hero” status for me both for his ingenuity and sense of hoopla (in equal measure). This sporadic blog is, of course, named after him.

So, I was pretty excited to go see The Greatest Showman, the Barnum biopic depicting the rise, fall and rise again of the circus ringmaster. Of course, the movie should be taken with a huge pinch of Hollywood, but boy I loved it. And for the first time in a long time I felt proud to be living a life that could trace (a tiny part of) its lineage back to one of the founding Fathers of the publicity stunt.

I’m still on the Barnum high so I thought I’d share a few thoughts it made me think.

1. DOING BEATS TALKING, ALWAYS

It’s a new year so every agency head is doing a round-up and scheduling posts accordingly in the hope of catching the eye of prospective clients and hires. Here’s mine. But this year, more than ever, I was struck by just how little work agencies are actually putting out, and how many PR people seem content to just let time fly past without making an impression. There are people like James from Hope&Glory, Peter Mountstevens from Taylor Herring and Mark P formerly of MHP Brand, now W, who want to make a name for themselves by actually putting out work, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule.

I see too many people saying they’re “creative”, scheduling talks on creativity, or worse, critiquing other people’s creativity without actually putting out any creative work of their own. Only today I learnt there’s an event being planned critiquing winning D&AD work where the PR people on the panel are likely to have never created D&AD-winning work, which is a little odd (and insulting) IMHO. Barnum didn’t critique. Barnum didn’t talk. Barnum did. And fame and fortune followed. Doing beats talking, always.

2. REACT ACCORDINGLY

“Without publicity something terrible happens…Nothing”, or so the quote attributed to Barnum goes, and there’s a moment in the film (spoiler alert) where his show gets a scathing review attacking its moral compass. Rather than crumble or complain, he reacts and offers discounted entry to anyone who brings a copy of the bad review to the gate. Barnum reacted accordingly and made a virtue out of the controversy.

We are lucky enough to work in a discipline that can react quickly to events – either concerning our clients or relevant to our clients – and we need to make the most of it because our advertising friends don’t really know how to do it. After all, they’ve not grown up being told by dyed-in-the-wool news editors (in usually colourful language) what exactly constitutes a news story and what doesn’t. But do headlines make things happen? Back in the day we phoned through a story of QVC seeing an 800 per cent increase in sales of Diana-esque lookalike rings 20 minutes after Prince William announced his engagement to Kate and she was pictured with said Diana ring. No matter that it was me who bought the eight rings to get the percentage increase, the press wanted the story and the headlines generated the hype (news travels fast across all mediums), which led to tens of thousands of pounds of sales. All because we reacted accordingly.

3. BE PROUD OF WHAT YOU DO

The movie documents Barnum assembling a crew of curiosities, a bunch of misfits shunned by “normal” society, who were turned into stars by the greatest showman. The circus grows in popularity, Barnum’s bank balance swells in the process, but society considers it hokum and not of cultural worth. The man himself begins to feel ashamed before (long story cut short) he realises that “the noblest art is making others happy.”

This struck a personal cord with me. I’m doing okay for myself. I live in a nice gaff on the South coast, can afford regular holidays and, most importantly for me, am able to buy my son and daughter new football boots of their choice every season (something my mum did three jobs for so I could have the same when growing up). PR gave me this lifestyle. Along with the occasional private boxes at the sporting events, comedy galas and music gigs. Along with the lavish award ceremonies and company away days in Halls and Houses normally reserved for Royalty. I’m grateful to the discipline and certainly not ashamed to say I work in PR, but I know lots of people who are, and I know lots of people who think it’s a shameful profession. I once got a pint of beer poured over me for saying I worked on the PR for The Sun newspaper despite running campaigns to improve child literacy, get kids coding and increasing checks for breast and prostate cancer all in one week. The point of this paragraph is, like Barnum, to realise that you are the best judge of you, and if you are how you spend your time and you’re working for a purpose – for the betterment of your family, for the betterment of humanity, or just for the betterment of yourself – then be proud of what you do.

Be More Barnum.

 

One of the most-awarded, most-talked about and most-imitated (knowingly or unknowingly) pieces of work I’ve worked on was/is The Tweet Shop in September 2012, or to give it its full name, The Kellogg’s Special K Cracker Crisps Tweet Shop.

The brief from Kellogg’s was to launch its new, “innovative”, Special K Cracker Crisps, which were low calorie potato crisps (or chips if reading in the US). We had press office covered off with product placement, personalised packaging, celebrity seeding, influencer seeding, etc, but wanted to add in a creative idea that would make the crisps a talking point and excite consumer media and trade. A big ask, but we were up for the challenge.

I remember briefing it out to the agency, but I don’t for the life of me remember who actually had the idea of opening the world’s first shop where people would pay for goods (in this case Special K Cracker Crisps) with social, instead of financial, currency – i.e. Tweet a message in exchange for a free pack of low calorie crisps. I think it was me, but I know of at least one other who claimed the idea, so maybe I didn’t. I do know I was obsessed at the time with the concept of Liking or Tweeting something in exchange for lowering the price of a product, and was trying to sell a ‘Tweet the Price of Our Car Down’ idea to Chevrolet – an idea that was eventually done by AutoTrader. The line of ‘get someone to do something and reward them for doing so’ thinking followed an earlier idea we implemented for the online beauty brand, feelunique.com, where we paid people to have the company’s name (temporarily) tattooed on their eyelids and go around winking at people. Tattooing a logo wasn’t an original idea, but I liked the term “Pay-Per-Wink” and therefore an idea was born and a lot of fun was had casting the office to find the perfect model eyelid. The tactic generated national and international coverage including a leader in The New York Times, loads of entries to be a “winker”, loads of traffic to feelunique.com and loads of sales, so it worked.

Anyway, if I didn’t have the idea, I was certainly thinking that way, and it made it into the pitch alongside two others, which I definitely don’t remember. When I’m writing a pitch, I’m often trying to sell an idea with a headline and a key visual. The headline usually has a bit of wit, but tells the story. In this case the headline was ‘The Tweet Shop’, which was a play on a ‘Sweet Shop’ (keep up at the back). The accompanying visual needs to give the client enough direction so they can see what it might look like and therefore take any nervousness away, which sounds obvious, but isn’t easy to do and does take a long time to find, which is why I try to read, see and store as many photographs into my memory bank as possible knowing that one day they may come in useful. The visual I used is below (an old-fashioned sweet shop with scripted signage), which is how I saw the idea being executed with piles of crisps in sweet jars. I didn’t have the time to get the idea scamped up so we just had to go with the image and hoped they would have enough imagination to see how it could look.

Off we went to Manchester to pitch what was a fairly small budget project, but a good brand and we felt we had a nice programme so were confident.

We won it, beating four others, I think. They liked the press office element so that could start immediately, but wanted much more detail on The Tweet Shop: where would it be, what would it look like, how would it work, who would staff it, how much stock would we need, when would we send the invites to bloggers, when would we contact broadcast media, etc. All questions that needed answers, but months turned into weeks as we developed the idea and eventually we only left ourselves about four weeks to turn it from idea to reality and the budget was tiny. The pressure was on.

Whenever there is pressure I always call Brian at Helix 3D who is my Mr Can Do. I knew he could fabricate a shopfront and interior in no time at all so it was all about finding a central London location on a shoestring budget. The agency had not long been bought by the Engine Group, so I ended up asking/begging the experiential agency, Slice, to get involved too and they came up trumps with a location in Soho. I was a bit worried about the name of the street – Meard Street – as all I kept thinking was ‘Shit Street’ based on my GCSE French knowledge of the word ‘Merde’, but I didn’t have a second option so simply pronounced it Me-ard Street every time I spoke to the client and crossed my fingers that no journalist would be mean enough to call anything “shit”.

My thought process pretty much from the pitch was to recreate the old-fashioned sweet shop, but the Kellogg’s client (who was the target audience) wanted it more aligned with a female audience so suggested it became more of a fashion boutique where people could sit and try the crisps. It was a good build on the concept so we went with it, although it was a stressful pivot on both sides as time was running out.

We eventually got the shop design agreed and approved, the contract signed with the space on Meard Street, and the build was in motion. And then I got a call from Brian… The owner of the venue was a writer who lived above it, and he was threatening to pull the plug on the job as the sound of drilling was interrupting his creative thinking! Brian told me his name, and I Googled him on the way down to the venue, which was only a 10m minute walk from the office. When I got there, I apologised profusely about the noise, promised him an expensive bottle of red wine when it was all over, and told him I was a big fan of his books, which won him over. Flattery does get you somewhere, sometimes. And because I felt bad about lying, I did end up reading his books and giving him some free advice on how to promote them.

With the shop fitted out all we needed were the Special K Cracker Crisps. And, of course, there was a problem. I forget exactly what it was, but I know that getting stock direct from a factory to a venue the day before an event is never a good idea, and not something I’ll ever rely on again in the future. We had a shop (just about), but no stock. The day the shop opened was the day Special K Cracker Crisps launched in Sainsbury’s so all we could do was ring every London store and see if they had had any deliveries. Most hadn’t, but we found a few and between us we were at the supermarket’s doors at 6am in the morning buying every pack of cracker crisps we could have got hold of. The snack buyers must have thought they were onto a hit when they saw week one sales figures. We managed to source enough so that we could press ahead, which was a relief as we had some broadcast media lined up that afternoon.

Because I’d taken on the role of production manager, I hadn’t really thought about the photography. In those days I shot with Ken Lennox, who was four times British photographer of the year, the ex-picture editor of the News of the World, The Sun and Daily Express, and who really was the best at getting news photography and getting it in. Even he was a bit stumped with it as, when all said an done, it was just a shop with crisps in it. Thankfully (the very photogenic) Kim Murray, who worked at Slice, braved the rain and took on the role of excited ‘customer’ with phone and crisps in hand and The Tweet Shop sign in the background. It was our only hero shot and fortunately made the Metro the next day, which along with some key national online outlets including Mail Online, The Guardian Online and BBC News online was a good start, I thought.

Obviously you aim for a clean sweep on the day coverage is expected, but from memory we were up against some big business stories, and media thought it was all a bit of a gimmick (which it was, but hey, it could be the future). So we slogged at it for a couple of weeks and eventually just about hit the client KPIs, which was a relief more than a celebration. And then, unbeknownst to us, Social Media Week happened and the Kellogg’s Special K Cracker Crisps Tweet Shop was the talk of the digital marketing town, which kicked off thousands of ‘branded conversations’ (a term we coined) online and when everyone is telling the client how great something is, they find it hard to disagree. More coverage, and awards, followed and it continues to be written about today as an example of social media engagement/interaction/[insert latest buzzword].

In truth, looking back, I’m not sure it was such a great idea as it didn’t say much about the product, but Kellogg’s was being innovative launching Special K crisps, and this was an innovative way to market them, so it just about worked I suppose.

Kellogg’s ending up rolling out Tweet (and Instagram) Shops all over the world as part of their new product launch strategy, which is good as it was eventual validation they rated the idea and results, but also annoying as we never got asked (or paid) for any of it. Which is another useful lesson to learn: when agreeing a contract, always include a line about usage rights!

The spooky part about the whole project was that, totally co-incidentally, my long-term friend (and only person I’ve had a genuine creative partnership with) Donald Swanepoel, who I worked with at Cow PR and Cow Africa, was building the world’s first Twitter-activated vending machine in South Africa for BOS Ice Tea at pretty much the same time as we were developing The Tweet Shop. I only knew about this when his name turned up in international coverage alongside ours. He technically went first date-wise so is officially the first person to come up with the idea of social currency replacing financial currency, but I hold on to the fact we were the first to roll it out in a shop. This kind of co-incidence really does make me think that yes, anyone can come up with a good idea, but there are only a handful who can consistently come up with good ideas and actually make them happen. Donald is one of those people and I’ll do a separate post on him at some point because he taught me so much in the brief spell we worked together.

How do you make one small hotel in Paddington stand out in a crowded market, become a global talking point and a must-visit destination? That was the brief given to us by the PR-savvy Eleanor Conroy at InterContinental Hotels Group way back in 2009.

I think we only had a few days turnaround from brief to competitive pitch (against three others) so we cleared our diaries, visited the hotel in question, and went to work to find what the pipe-smoking David Ogilvy would call the ‘Unique Selling Point’. Don’t get me wrong it was a very nice hotel, but the only real feature seemed to be that the flowers changed according to the seasons… This, we were informed, was the USP, so we just went with it and presented three scamped-up ideas with a floral theme.

The Hanging Gardens of Paddington, the world’s biggest hanging basket that would be affixed to the side of the hotel, was thought of and pitched purely because of the word play on Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the ancient wonders of the world. It made for a funny picture-story and would create a reason for media to write / talk about the changing flowers. We won the pitch. And I broke into a cold sweat as I soon realised we’d have to make the idea a reality in days.

I immediately called Brian Dowling at Helix3D who specialises in making the impossible possible on a daily basis. He figured out the build, calculated the engineering and oversaw the installation. Before I knew it we had a 20ft hanging basket stuck on the side of Hotel Indigo in Paddington.

Ken Lennox, the four times British photographer of the year, former pic-editor of The Sun, News of the World and Daily Express, and therefore the most over-qualified photographer operating with a junior account manager (i.e. me), turned up ready to capture the basket, edit the pictures and wire out to the world’s press.

The only issue was the driving rain, which had made the installation tricky and meant we were shooting at dusk. Ken was confident he got a set of usable pictures so we sat in the hotel to go through the review and edit. And at that point my luck ran out. I was young, but experienced enough to know that a job never runs smoothly, there is always an issue. On this occasion the lack of daylight had resulted in a set of pictures that, despite people saying they were “fine”, I just didn’t think would be published.

The massive basket was already becoming a social media talking point; it was attracting the attention of the local council who were arguing against my rationale of it being ‘temporary signage’ and insisting the structure came down; the client needed coverage to hit; Ken was booked on another job the next day; and I had run out of budget (I was pulling favours as it was).

Ken knew that the “fine” had broken me – it’s the one word that completely crushes a creative PR – so to his amazing credit he suggested we shoot again at first light (six o’clock in the morning) and he would wire out and follow up on the phone on his way to his next job. I could have kissed him, but hugged him instead.

The next day Ken, Claudia Davies (complete with red jumper) and I turned up at 5.30am with the hotel basked in glorious sunshine. Claud climbed into the hanging garden clutching a make-shift watering can (otherwise known as a teapot) and Ken went 100 metres down the street and shot on a long lens. The issue this time was too much sunlight meaning too much flare and another unusable set of pictures. Ken had to be off to his next job so I prayed for a bit of cloud cover, which eventually came and allowed us to get four usable shots, which were immediately wired off before Ken took off with his bags over his back and a black coffee in hand. Claud, still shaking from her stint of ‘flower-girl’, and I set about selling in the story to wires and newsdesks.

“Alright Dan, I can do a few pars on it and I’ll stick the images out, but I don’t think I can use the ‘world’s biggest’ line as it’s not Guinness World Record approved”, was the feedback from one of most reliable wire contacts. I called him up straight away, “I’m telling you”, I said, “no-one is daft enough to think of, let alone build, a hanging basket this big so you can include the ‘world’s biggest’ line even if it’s not bloody verified by a drinks company”. “Can I quote you on that?”, he joked. “No, but I’ll send you some flowers if you put it out with the ‘world’s biggest’ line.” (he did and I did).

Thankfully the coverage started to roll in and snowballed into TV crews from around the world descending onto a little hotel in Paddington giving it a few days of fame, an increase in visitors and a surge of bookings – all before the killjoy council did eventually make us de-rig a few days earlier than planned.

It certainly wasn’t the best PR campaign in the world (it was conceived off the back of a pun after all…), but it did get shortlisted for a few industry awards and led to more work from IHG. More importantly it taught me a valuable lesson that if, in the pit of your stomach, you’re not happy with something – even if colleagues and clients say it’s “fine” – then don’t let it go out. Some of my most successful work has been at the second attempt and there’s no shame in that – you just need to take your client and colleagues with you, and that often means showing you care more and will work harder to grind a creative result out no matter what.

There’s a Notes folder on my phone called “Other Business Ideas”, which is a collection of random ideas that are sure to make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. Each has an accompanying brand name and strapline, but that’s about it.

In the last three weeks I’ve met, and have started working with, different start-ups who have actually made two of the ideas in “Other Business Ideas” a reality and are on their way to making millions. Whilst this is a bit annoying (It Could Have Been Me…), I also find it reassuring.

It reassures me, and reminds me, that it is more important to ship work, i.e. make the idea a reality and get it out the door, than talk about work. Ideas that exist only in portfolios, PR competitions, dormant client plans or as Notes on a phone, aren’t good ideas. They are, at best, irrelevant ideas.

A good idea is only a good idea if it happens in the real world.

Relaunching Victorian ‘Moustache Cups’ (cups that were designed to stop liquid soaking your ‘tache/beard), has sat in my “Other Business Ideas” folder for three years. I was going to post it so someone could hopefully make it a reality, but in searching for the image, I found a link on Firebox that suggests one was released late last year! It does, at least, reinforce my point that if you’re going to spend effort thinking about it, follow through and ship it.

“Gentleman, we have run out of money; now we have to think”, so goes the quote attributed to Winston Churchill, and I think it’s an apt saying that applies to creative PR ideas. When you’ve got very limited budget, you need to really think.

Despite the teen vampire movie Twilight being the biggest theatrical release of the year when it came to launching the DVD for client E:One, we had a couple of thousands pounds expense budget for the entire campaign. I’ve always tried to put products at the heart of product launches, not least as it’s one thing we don’t have to pay for, so I challenged the team to make the physical DVD the story – so we could literally deliver the line: “to mark the launch of…”

The brainstorm threw up the predictable vampire-cliches including blood, bats and bites, which was the starting point. DVDs in blood? Bit gruesome; DVDs delivered by bats? Not sure it’s possible and didn’t want PETA on us for animal cruelty; DVDs auto-bitten instead of autographed? That’s the one, brilliant. Simple, low-cost, and easy to activate – we’d send a bunch of DVDs to the teen star Robert Pattinson, and he’d simply bite them, rather than sign them. The stunt could be released as a news and picture story as well as using the DVDs for competition prizes with fan forums, etc. The client loved it.

But as anyone who works in PR knows; nothing is simple. Pattinson wasn’t available and the US studio refused to put in a request for his time. The client asked us to go back to the drawing board, but I’ve learned over the years that good ideas are scarce to come by so before you think afresh, think whether you can creatively overcome the sticking point. John Webster, the BMP ad legend responsible for the Honey Monster, Smash Martians and the amazing The Guardian: Points of View ad, was the master of this. He went to every consumer focus group and listened intently to the feedback; not to change the creative idea, but to improve it. Perhaps most famously, a focus group of mums thought his original ‘little monster’ character for Sugar Puffs would be too scary for their kids, but instead of scrapping the idea, he simply made the monster massive, clumsy and, as a result, loveable. The Honey Monster was born. A campaign character that ran and ran. (There’s an excellent documentary, John Webster: The Human Ad Man, that’s worth watching).

Anyway, taking inspiration from Webster and with the proverb, “necessity is the Mother of invention” ringing in my ears, I worked with the brilliant Ben Brooks-Dutton (now a creative planner at Freuds), to work out how to get Robert Pattinson’s bite marks without actually needing him to do the biting. With a £500 budget. The idea hit us that we’d use the numerous pictures of him smiling (or not smiling) on the internet to simply create a mould of his teeth. My first call was, as ever, to the amazing Brian Dowling at Helix3D, who can make anything.

“Brian, if we got you some close-up pictures of Robert Pattinson’s teeth do you think you could make a machine than would Autobite DVDs?”, I asked. “Sounds simple enough”, was the immediate reply. Days later an Autobite contraption arrived in the office, which could puncture perfect bite-marks through just about any surface. I’m not sure the teeth marks were exactly the shape of Robert Pattinson’s, but I figured that no-one could prove us wrong and the intrigue was good for the story.

One hundred DVDs were Autobitten and given to HMV to flog at their special midnight opening, but not before Ben got the images and words spreading like wildfire through fan forums, teen mags and in national newspapers.

Twilight was the biggest-selling DVD of the year and we ended up launching all the subsequent films and DVDs – spawning ideas like apple-vertising and eye-vertising (it was obviously our ‘vertising’-period!).

So if at first your idea hits a problem, don’t give up, stick with it and challenge yourself to creatively overcome the obstacle.

I like to listen to Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2, which is the show presented by Clare Balding that discusses ethical and religious issues, not because I’m hugely religious, but because it always has interesting guests that make me think. This morning there was an interview with Jagraj Singh who is the founder of the online platform ‘Basics of Sikhs’. He talked about mankind’s responsibility to imagine the world we want and realise it. That piece was then followed by an interview with children’s author Laurence Anholt, a practicing Buddhist, who quoted Buddha as his guiding philosophy: “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

Last weekend, before seeing the new Star Wars, I introduced my son to the old Star Wars and, as a result, the philosophy of Yoda (“Do or do not. There is no try”), and the Jedi power of The Force (“This is not the droid you’re looking for”).

And the week before that I watched a(nother) documentary on Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, and was reminded of his infamous “reality distortion field”, the sheer will to bend people to his way of thinking and inspire them to achieve a result that they never thought possible (until Jobs told them it was).

So that’s quite a lot of similar (Yogi-inspired) advice making its way into my world in a relatively short period of time. All talking about how our reality is created by our actions, which is brilliant inspiration for PR people. After all, we work in an amazing profession where if we can think it, we can do it.

Five and a half years ago we made the lifestyle choice (slightly forced upon us by the need to find a school for my son), to move from London to Brighton. This means I have to be up at 5.30am every day and get two trains and a bus to be at my desk by 8.15am. It’s always been important to me to be in as early as possible so the team know I’m putting the hours in too. It bothers me that I’m no longer the first in, if truth be told. Anyway, at 6am on Monday, I was at my local station waiting (in the rain), when a man wearing a red rosette handed me a leaflet asking me to consider joining the Labour Party and help nationalise the rail network. At 6am! In the rain! Whatever your politics, this bloke was working hard for his cause, and I admired the fact he cared passionately about something. He’d earned my attention and made me question where the Conservative or Green Party were. He’d done what the human spirit connects with: he’d tried harder.

Back in the 1960s the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach won Avis, the car hire company, as a client. It was number two in the rental market behind the giant Hertz. Avis, naturally, wanted to make up ground and take market share. DDB figured there wasn’t much product difference between the two companies (a rental car is a rental car), so decided to make a virtue of Avis’s challenger status and manufacture a story around its superior customer service. “When you’re only No.2, you try harder,” read the copy of the first ad, “Or else.” The ‘We try harder’ brand idea was born and lived for 50 years before being killed off in 2012. Like most historians of advertising, I worship anything that was touched by Bernbach, but what I love about this particular idea was its self-fulfilling nature. By putting on record that they tried harder, Avis had to try harder. They had to live the promise, and the promise gave them a purpose. It must have been pretty exciting proving the promise and closing the gap on Hertz (if not quite ever over-taking them).

Whilst we didn’t articulate it in a beautiful set of words like DDB did, we had the same spirit when we looked after LOVEFiLM. Over a period of eight years, we helped to take the business from a niche DVD-by-post service to Europe’s leading movie and TV streaming site, which was eventually acquired by Amazon. There were loads of talented people responsible for the success of that business, but in my opinion, only one man responsible for the success of the brand and that’s Simon Morris. The guy is a walking marketing Marvel (supported by his brilliant sidekicks Fliss Hickson and Ash Beretta). Our villains were anyone who tried to compete in the DVD and online movie rental space. You name them, we took them on. Blockbuster, ScreenSelect, Netflix (we saw them off the first time they tried to come into the UK), BlinkBox (and in the process Tesco), iTunes, the BBC, Amazon (until they bought the business) and, our absolute nemesis, Sky. With little product difference, the strategy was simply to ‘try harder’ and ensure we either started, or were included in, any possible consumer and trade conversation to do with film and TV.

If there was a story to be released, we quickly knocked it up and released it. Top Bikini Moments, Most Motivating Speeches, Films To Lose Weight To, Films to Make Out To, The World’s First Film Review In Klingon (yes, really), Top Film MILFs, Who’s Watching What Where, Real Life Desperate Housewives, Films People Pretend To Watch But Haven’t, Top Film Cars, Best Film Alien, Best Film Sequel, Best Film Trilogy, Best Film Prequel, Ultimate Bond, Ultimate Batman, Ultimate Superhero, Silent Movies Boom, Saddest Films, Best Feelgood Films, Funniest Film Ever (with a Laugh Out Loud rating), Greatest Ever Movie Outlet, Best Opening Lines, Best Ending Lines, Best Opening Credits, Best Closing Credits, and on and on. Eight years of consumer surveys (none of which we paid for as all results came from a poll engine on the site), product placement and features. It wasn’t just consumer activity either. We – with the equally mischievous corporate PR guy, Ben Simons – ensured LOVEFiLM had an opinion on every trade issue going, announcing everything and scuppering competitors at every turn (my highlight being supplying the ‘difficult’ questions to business journos at the, eventual, UK Netflix launch). One week we released a story pretty much every day, but weirdly the media didn’t get annoyed, they lapped it up. We were a cheeky British challenger brand sticking it to everyone, and no-one could compete with our output and the resulting media domination (averaging 500+ pieces of coverage a month). Whilst the competition sat in boardrooms planning, we just got on with doing and stole every bit of newsprint possible until there was nothing left for anyone else. And because we consistently made the case that we were the superior service, LOVEFiLM had to deliver a superior service. They had to live up to a promise, and the promise gave us all a purpose.

It was a real lesson for me: if you struggle to find a product USP, nothing beats ‘we try harder’.

The World’s First Film Review In Klingon was shot in our office. After filming, the two guys fell out over the fee and had a full blown shouting match…in Klingon!

The Ultimate Superhero and Villain (above). The composite story technique served us well through the years albeit I put an end to it after a “no more Ultimates, please” journo request.