This blog will primarily be a place for my PR thoughts and advice, but I’m occasionally going to use it to share the process of a creative idea. All the ideas featured have come from my head, but I’ll give credit where credit is due, of course.
The inaugural ‘Anatomy of an Idea’ is a tactic from July 2011 on behalf of the National Trust, the charity that looks after properties and spaces on behalf of the nation. I can’t remember how we came to get the business (I don’t think it was from a pitch), but we’d already kicked off the account with some great, headline-grabbing tactics so was handed a summer brief to attract family memberships.
We did our usual line of questioning and research, but it was pretty clear to me that the problem was the perception that the NT was a bit middle class, quiet and fussy, and not really the place for energetic, loud and (sometimes) clumsy small children. This was partly based on my own experience of taking a toddler around NT properties, but also because the Chairman, Simon Jenkins, was making big noises (and changes) about breaking down barriers and making NT accessible to all. The challenge was to bring the Chairman’s thoughts to life.
I’d been studying the work of BBH a lot and generally reading anything I could about the way that John Hegarty approached creativity, so was heavily into the idea of every campaign or tactic simply being a ‘product demonstration’. I.e. Not having to tell the audience something, but simply showing it by demonstrating it. All of BBH’s great AXE/Lynx ‘Lynx effect’ ads are product demonstrations. Think of the ‘Billions‘ ad: bloke sprays Lynx on himself, he smells irresistible, thousands on women run towards him. A simple product demonstration, which hits a (primal) adolescent over the head with the message: use Lynx, attract women.
With ‘product demonstration’ at the back of my brain, I asked myself the question: ‘How do you demonstrate that NT properties and places are child-friendly?’ I find putting the brief into a one sentence question is always a good technique as it focuses the mind and forces you to come up with an answer.
This question led to ideas like ‘Keep On The Grass’ signs (as opposed to ‘Keep Off The Grass’), which were rejected at the time for being operationally difficult to execute (probably because they were still wrestling with convincing individual properties about the ‘access to all’ mantra). A couple of years later NT did introduce those signs with The Click Design Consultants.
Knowing that we couldn’t really do physical installations at properties and places forced a rethink on the question: ‘How do you demonstrate that NT properties and places are child-friendly?’
The idea hit me in the shower (a lot of ideas do). To demonstrate that the National Trust is child-friendly why don’t we invite the naughtiest kids we can find to run riot through NT properties and places. And the naughtiest kids are…Dennis The Menace and chums. Let’s create a special edition of The Beano to break down perceptions and show that all children (even badly behaved children) were welcome at the NT.
It was the perfect idea as I could imagine each geographic region getting their own show in the comic (important as the regional committee signed off the ideas!), and I could use the pages as ads for the NT.
Would NT go for it? It was an easy sell really as we just stuck up the words of the Chairman and the importance of making the NT ‘accessible to all’ before we presented the idea.
Would The Beano go for it? The then Head of Marketing, John-Paul Murphy, at DC Thompson saw the value of a potential collaboration with the NT not just for the PR exposure, but because its shops were a route to sell more copies, so it was a no-brainer for him! (Collaborations have since become a useful marketing tool for The Beano with The FA, Dogs Trust and others going down the same PR path).
No money changed hands between NT and DC Thompson (it was a contra-deal), and in July 2011 the ‘Gnashional Trust’ edition of The Beano hit the shelves. Selected images from the comic and a ‘drawing-of’ film were released to media alongside a press release, which explained the tie-up and the reasons behind it. I forget how many pieces of coverage it generated, but enough to win PR Week, PRCA Awards and Licensing awards.
To the extreme credit of the client (the lovely Laura Appleby), the National Trust included a ‘Kids Go Free’ voucher in the comic, had Beano characters ‘takeover’ the website, and also ran Beano-related events during the summer complete with character costumes and games. She helped turn it from a tactic into a fully integrated summer campaign. Family membership sales rose accordingly, and it marked the start of a very successful few years of National Trust summer ‘family-friendly’ PR campaigns.
A load of old Barnum. 