IPA Strategy Group

Open Strategy

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Between the 28th July and 1st of August we’ll be asking how you and your agencies brief for creative diversity. What works, what doesn’t. What’s changing, what’s left to do. We’d love to hear what you think. The floor is yours. Because Open Strategy begins with open debate.

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Day 5 - Three killer moves for more diverse creativity - Leo Rayman (Grey)

Photo: Steve Wright Jr.

At the beginning of the week we posed a simple question: How can strategists brief for greater creative diversity?

We investigated four award-winning examples of modern, original, diverse creativity, talked with the strategists who helped make it happen and opened the floor to your smart opinions on Twitter - #IPAStrategy.

We’ll be compiling all the input we received into a short guide for clients and agencies later this year.

So what did we learn?

Pull a crew together

Photo: Creative Commons

The more unusual the mission the tighter the team needs to be. All the cases we looked at shared a common theme – a strong bond of trust between the client and their agency partners.

If you want a more diverse kind of output, you’re going to need a more diverse set of perspectives in the team you pull together to crack it. Our cases all brought a wider array of capabilities into play than you would expect to find on a project with more traditional output. Responsibilities must begin to blur as you start to collaborate in new ways.

So go find some unusual partners within and without your firm.

Redefine the problem. Reimagine the solution

Photo: Creative Commons

All the cases we investigated had reframed the question. They had taken a problem and looked at it a new way: how to sell crisps or how to start great parties, how to lobby gun companies or how to stop funding them?

Better a rough answer to the right question than a precise answer to the wrong question.  So ask yourself are you even asking the right question?

One way to get a fresh perspective on the problem is to find insights in new places. Doritos clients observed student parties, LEMZ in Amsterdam spent four months researching the issues. Both then had the ammunition they needed to create a solid model of the opportunity.

Backing a hunch with some decent evidence really helped to reduce the perceived risk of these new approaches. You can’t always predict the future, but simply trying to describe what might happen increases the chances of pulling-off something new.

Culture eats strategy for brunch

Photo: Creative Commons

Critically, the diversity we saw was more dependent on culture than process. Sometimes the people behind the project simply worked in firms that were more open to novel solutions. But more often they created a team culture that would allow for the right kind of innovative work to be created.

It is perhaps no surprise that in at least two of our cases, the project started when a couple of people with a shared vision and ambition started to socialise the idea and it snowballed from there.

If your culture rejects these types of ideas, show the risks of inaction, agree on a common ambition and get senior sponsorship for it.

Same old in, same old out

Ultimately coming-up with new, genre-defying creative solutions can only happen if at the inception of the project, the strategist creates the right kind of environment for those ideas to thrive.

This is what briefs and briefings are for. They set out agreed parameters for the project. They inspire diversified outputs through fresh, unusual and insightful inputs.

To put it another way: standard clichéd input, standard clichéd output.

So it is down to you; your imagination, your ability to keep an open mind and above all, having the energy drive it through.

What are your top tips when briefing for more diverse creativity?

Keep the conversation going on Twitter using #IPAStrategy hashtag!

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Day 4 Summary - Simon James (SapientNitro)

Day 4, and we continue the theme of creativity tackling serious, real world issues with Lemz of Amsterdam.

It’s easy, in hindsight, to review the work on its merits as a fantastic creative technology solution to a harrowing real life issue. Unsurprisingly, that masks the level of effort that went into bringing this solution to life. No fast strategy here.

When you delve deeper into the project you realise that every step required thoughtful planning.

Firstly, Lemz mandate their people to spend 15% of their time on special projects. This happened to be one of those projects. There was no brief here except for the one Lemz created for themselves.

Secondly, Lemz undertook a level of research that educated themselves to the full horrors of webcam child sex tourism. This commitment helped tremendously in convincing the client that the agency was serious and informed about the issue.

Finally, to protect both the individuals involved in the project and the agency, development was conducted in secrecy. A tight team of six developed the entire project without the rest of the agency’s knowledge.

When you add those ingredients together, the strategy of ring fencing special project time, the passionate proactive approach to a client and the dedication of comprehensive research to understand the subject – you are in a very strong position to do great work.

In an age of instant gratification and of real time marketing, it is refreshing to see work that clearly benefited from a period of gestation. As marketing speeds up, the time allowed for strategists to generate insights is being squeezed. The next time you feel squeezed mention Lemz and the Sweetie campaign.

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Day 4 - Lemz Amsterdam - Terre De Hommes - Sweetie

Host: Simon James from SapientNitro

Strategist: Tim Claassen 

Live Twitter debate (#IPAStrategy) at 13:00 today with Simon James and Tim Claassen. 

Watch the video: 

Simon James from Sapient Nitro interviews Tim Claassen from Lemz on their Cannes Lion Grand Prix for Good winning campaign Sweetie.

SJ: How did you prevent your diverse idea not being killed-off right at the start?

TC: Sweetie was developed as a special project. As an agency we allow 15% of our people’s time to be spent on special projects. It allows time (and brain power) to be spent on things that can contribute to work that fully supports our vision on brands and creativity. We believe that the creative community - and its product ‘advertising’ - can make the world a better place.

So we actively approached Terre des Hommes after reading a newspaper article mentioning the dreadful situation of thousands of Philippine children being forced into Webcam Child Sex Tourism every day. After reading this we chose to approach Terre des Hommes and - kind of - ask for a briefing on this subject. In the 1.5 year long process of developing the full idea we have always, together with the client, kept an open and critical mindset towards it, making sure it made sense at every step. By applying this critical thinking we avoided the idea to die on us and instead, we managed to ensure that we could craft it into something better along the way.

SJ: How did you help your client to buy a more diverse idea in the first place?

TC: I think by showing a sincere interest for a problem, we earned the client’s trust. We’ve had to help and support the client to re-think the concept step by step and slowly change their imagination and gut feeling. This was only possible through giving them fact-based research to justify each of the choices we made throughout the process. We collaborated with the client at every stage of the development process so the idea originally grew.

SJ:  How did a more diverse approach to finding insights impact the idea you came up with?

TC: When developing Sweetie we allowed ourselves to first fully understand the problem. We dedicated four months research without ever thinking about the actual idea or solution. We even used it as a go/no go decision point, making sure we felt inspired and equipped with the right insights and strategy to not just address the problem, but really contribute to a actual change in Webcam Child Sex Tourism.

SJ: How did you create a shared team responsibility for a diverse creative idea?

TC: We treated Sweetie as a special project and we used small multifaceted team of six who worked dedicatedly on the project. Once the team came up with the idea, partners were brought in to contribute with their expertise. We even kept the project a secret from the rest of the agency, making sure that we wouldn’t ourselves become a victim of the predators and the criminal organizations associated with them. Of course the secrecy added to the feeling of responsibility.

SJ: How did you pull the right kind of people together (in and out of your agency) to make your diverse idea happen?

TC: You’d be surprised to see what a true issue - and strong idea to counter it - can do in encourage people and partners to join in and contribute. With Sweetie, the drive and excitement of creating something that could actually drive change worked well in making it happen.

Final question:

SJ: If you were to do it all again, what one thing would you do differently?

TC: To be honest: nothing. That's not because we’re not critical about our work, it’s because we took our time and were, for obvious reasons, careful in each step of the process. The whole operation, together with the final PR apotheosis, was carefully planned and was set up for success.

Join the live Twitter debate (#IPAStrategy) today at 13:00pm with Simon James (Sapient Nitro) and Tim Claassen (Lemz Amsterdam) Follow @IPA_Updates, @Si_james_ and @TimClaassen

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Day 3 Summary - Leo Rayman (Grey)

Day 3 and we looked into how to get to more diverse creative output – with a US campaign against gun violence.

What really struck a chord here was how a diverse creative solution can come from a fresh perspective on the problem. Take gun violence; one-way to address it is to try and change public perceptions using broadcast media. By no means an ineffective option.

But a more diverse solution was to hit gun manufacturers where it hurts, their pockets.   A diverse answer based on a fresh insight: people are invested in gun manufacturer shares without even realising it.

The conversation quickly turned to more practical discussion of how to get to more unusual and original creative and media ideas. But in many businesses “the rut runs deep”. It is easier to follow existing processes than to challenge them.

Its worse actually, because often the barrier to doing things in new ways is not process it’s culture. “That’s not the way we do it around here’. Culture trumps process – both as an enabler and barrier to diversification.

So how do you breakthrough?

Mainly its about having energy and enthusiasm. And frankly getting-off on the excitement that comes with taking a risk.

Energy and enthusiasm that stems from a conviction that things could be different.

Really, we’re talking about having a “Vision”.

A vision of how things might be different.

Today’s States United to Prevent Gun Violence example reimagined the problem to be less about changing perceptions and more about changing investments.

That fertile imagination – the ability to reframe a problem - and remain open to the type of solution the problem merits, is more critical than ever.

Surely that’s the strategic planner’s role? To imagine a different future for the brands they work with. And then the enthusiasm to push for the breakout creative solutions required to help realise it.

Tune-in again tomorrow for our final case study – it’s a properly impressive example of creative diversification…

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DAY 3 - STATES UNITED TO PREVENT GUN CRIME / GREY NEW YORK - UNLOAD YOUR 401K

Host: Leo Rayman from Grey London  

Strategist: States United to Prevent Gun Violence / Grey New York  

Live Twitter debate (#IPAStrategy) at 2:00pm today with Leo Rayman.

Watch the video:

LR: How did you help your Client buy a more diverse idea in the first place?

SU: Given the sensitive, political nature of Gun Violence Prevention, Grey as an agency did not officially partner with the non-profit organisation, States United To Prevent Gun Violence.  Rather, a small group of individuals passionate about the cause worked the project in their own time to make it reality.

Originally we approached them in 2012 with an idea to produce a Public Service Announcement and an online petition to raise awareness of gun law reform.

Being a small team of passionate individuals, we were extremely transparent with States United To Prevent Gun Violence about our resources and capabilities – ideas would have to be produced as presented, with very little room for expensive and lengthy revisions.  Our "Clients" proved very understanding and only helped to build up the idea further.

In 2013, we approached them with "Unload Your 401k." Unloading your 401K, divesting your funds had been shown to work during the ending of Apartheid in South Africa. They, like our team, recognized the power of divestment as a new approach to Gun Violence Prevention.

LR: How did a more diverse approach to finding insights impact the idea you came up with?

SU: In earnest, when it has come to Gun Violence Prevention, thus far it has not been about finding human truths or mind- and heart-opening insights, but rather searching for the new ways to approach the cause.

LR: How did you set a shared team responsibility for a diverse creative idea?

SU: "Unload Your 401k" is such a surprisingly obvious idea, that from the very start, people who heard it riffed, immediately wanted to work on it.  It's a simple premise, with the chance to make a big impact.

Given the many moving parts of the project, including a Launch Event, multiple Public Service Announcements and a website, we enlisted interested parties across account, creative, production, digital development and digital production and gave them very specific roles and responsibilities.  The few and the fierce!  Everyone knew their part, and that if someone did not deliver, we could not deliver the program.

LR: How did you pull the right people together?

SU: "Unload Your 401k" began as a website – so we started with the best of the best of Grey's Digital Department to help develop the strategy, build the website, design the user experience and creative.  It was an amazing undertaking, with the Clients providing smart inputs along the way to ensure we included the most crucial information to inspire action.

Then, we realized it could be so much more.

So, we enlisted folks in our production department to partner with account and creative not only on filming a Public Service Announcement, but also about creating an experience and an event that we would be proud to invite our Gun Violence Prevention partners to witness.  

In the first week, the campaign encouraged 10,000 Americans to start shifting their funds, gaining coverage on CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and 200+ other outlets.

See the website here: http://unloadyour401k.com/

Join the live Twitter debate (#IPAStrategy) today at 2:00pm with Leo Rayman. Follow @IPA_Updates and @leorayman

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DAY 2 SUMMARY - JAMES CAIG (ISOBAR)

Day 2, and we’re back in more familiar territory: an FMCG brand wanting to stretch its audience without alienating its base.

The Doritos campaign was anything but conventional, though. Yesterday’s working hypothesis – diversification is possible with a confident client and a trusted agency – was part proven.

We learned that a social-led campaign like Mariachi requires bravery on both sides. At the agency, lines are blurring. Traditional strategists are less territorial, and a new kind of social team is emerging, equally well versed in brand, business, and the contribution they make to each.

For clients, bravery is an instinct for the unconventional, openness to new ways of working, and recognition that you can’t control the way a campaign will unfold. Let the agency plan on their feet. Set guidelines at the start – after that you’re improvising within agreed rules.

Crucially, strategists have a huge role to play:

Fresh and diverse input can lead a fresh idea

Involve creative and client in your research – they should feel the resonance of your insight as well as understand it

Set the ambition that frames the work – Doritos saw themselves competing against Netflix, not just other snacks

Make a classic strategic case even for innovative ideas and channels – it emboldens the client to make braver choices

Know what to measure, and when –AMV/BBDO had spotted a correlation between sales and the buzz metric in their brand tracker and developed an evaluation framework accordingly

Finally, the message was, take courage. Moving away from proven models is tough for clients and agencies. The more success stories the more confidence will grow.

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DAY 2 - AMV/BBDO - DORITOS “MARIACHI”

Host: James Caig from Isobar

Strategist: Tom White from AMV/BBDO

Live Twitter debate (#IPAStrategy) at 12:00 today with Tom White and James Caig.

Watch the video:

James Caig from Isobar interviews Tom White from AMV/BBDO on their Warc Social Prize winning campaign for Doritos "Mariachi".

JC: How did you prevent your diverse idea not being killed-off right at the start?

TW: It helped that Doritos had seen success in the years preceding Mariachi with ideas that eschewed the ‘conventional’ model. Like Doritos Dodgeball (which gave people the chance to fire cannon-loaded dodgeballs at celebrities) and Doritos Late Night (which involved the creation of the world’s first 360° music video).

 Our vision for the brand – captured in our brief – was to position Doritos as an entertainment brand as much as it is a snack brand. The brand targets young, sociable people. It operates in a category that is largely driven by impulse purchase. And it wants to be a feature of people's house parties.

 So the brief for Mariachi Doritos demanded a solution that could be entertaining, attention grabbing and sociable. To do that in a proper way meant doing something other than just a TV campaign.

JC: How did you help your client to buy a more diverse idea in the first place?

TW: We benefit from having a brave client with an instinctive belief in the value of big, multi-channel ideas. But it was still critical for us to bring some proper rigour to our approach, by being clearer about how Mariachi Doritos would work, and why it was worth going to the effort.

 We’d learned quite a lot from previous Doritos campaigns that helped us, and our client, better understand the value of pursuing a more socially-led (i.e. not just TV) approach. But our clients still had lots of fair questions. Questions such as:

‘We like doing social media, but it makes us uncomfortable because the process is so messy. How do we bring some order to the chaos?’

‘How do we measure if it’s working or not?’

‘Sure, we’ve done some fun stuff in the past, but we’ve also done some rubbish. How do we do more of the good stuff, more of the time?’

 We think that similar questions are being asked by brand owners and agencies everywhere. And it seems to us that what clients are really getting at when they’re asking these questions is actually ‘Where’s the strategic planning in social media?’

 So we challenged ourselves to demonstrate how classical brand planning could bring new purpose and value to Doritos social presence. And we identified some key principles:

 1.      Social can drive buzz and buzz can increase sales - by analysing our own numbers we observed a direct positive correlation between the metric for ‘buzz around the brand’ in Doritos brand tracker and sales. This was important, sales-based reassurance for our client.

 2.       No conversations without content - this was the principle we encouraged our client and creative department to sign up to on Doritos. It led us first to create our entire brand idea around continuous content creation. Mariachi Doritos became a branded band for Doritos, playing up and down the country at gigs, festivals and in people's living rooms. We conceived our idea not as a campaign but as a tour. The band would act as an engine room for content creation through their performances.

3.        A new type of planner - the most significant planning contribution to Doritos’ social strategy wasn't an insight, a message, a media deployment or a creative brief. It was a person. A resource. A new type of planner. We call her Naomi. She’s a fast turnaround, 24/7, always-on-call planner. We found that most brands take a fairly random approach to how they engage through social media but believed that it’s better when that buzz also says something useful about your product or brand. So to achieve this we brought together social community management and planning – and ‘Naomi’ was the result. Like any good planner she has a proper understanding of what’s going to help her brand’s business – so she knows that posting brand content and interacting with fans at times when our fan base would be attending gatherings or parties is particularly effective. But unlike a traditional planner, Naomi sits at the center of a new organisational structure which means she has 24/7 access to Mac operators who can knock up any image request in a matter of minutes. She is plugged in to the planning team at AMV, has a hot line to the client in order to get fast approval and of course is connected to over 700,000 of Doritos' social media fans.

 4.       Measuring the effectiveness of our social media - we also developed a framework to monitor the effectiveness of every piece of Mariachi social media content (posts, tweets, images, performances) we put out into the world. This meant we could ensure ‘high-performing’ content was pushed harder through all our social media channels. Through our methodology, if content performed well within three hours (past 2% virality benchmark) then it would be amplified to a wider audience.

JC: How did a more diverse approach to finding insights impact the idea you came up with?

TW: Our approach started with arranging lots of parties - at local university campuses, in people's homes and in offices. We set up cameras and microphones and followed the action from a monitor nearby. We observed that while social gatherings and parties are supposed to be fun, they’re also pressured situations – especially for British people who are particularly prone to being uptight and socially awkward.

The party host wants everything to go smoothly and for everyone to have fun.The party guests can feel a bit awkward when they first arrive in a room full of people they haven’t seen in a while. They all want something to help break the ice and get things warmed up.

 This suggested a clear role for our brand. If British people needed something to help them get in to the swing of things at parties, could Doritos be the brand that helped repressed Brits get the party started?

JC: How did you create a shared team responsibility for a diverse creative idea?

TW: This was a complicated and multi-faceted campaign. But everything needed to pull in the same direction and our band’s narrative had to unfold over time. So early on, planning and creative sat down to map out the campaign across media and time. And once the campaign kicked off, because we were in the mode of continual content creation and distribution, planning continued to influence how the campaign was deployed.   

JC: How did you pull the right kind of people together (in and out of your agency) to make your diverse idea happen?

TW: By creating a Mariachi band we were, in effect, entering the music business. We engaged experts in band management to get some good pointers on how to market and promote a music act.

JC: What would you have done differently?

TW: In retrospect we’d have signed up the Mariachi band to a stricter exclusivity deal! Since they've hit the big time with Doritos they've signed up with a hotshot agent (the same guy who represents Michael Bublé) and have coined it from PA’s all over the world.

Join the live Twitter debate (#IPAStrategy) today at 12:00 with Tom White and James Caig. Follow @IPA_Updates, @Jamescaig, @AMV_BBDO 

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DAY 1 - SUMMARY - KATIE MACKAY (MOTHER)

  So, what did we learn from the first day of opening up?

Well, prompted by the Rainbow Laces story, we started the day believing that  it’s easier to diversify for a good cause than for the day job…

As to why, well, that’s where the debate started.

Perhaps because where big budgets don’t loom, we feel we can be more risky. But equally so, perhaps we just look to innovate more when we have a cause to believe in? And when it came to the Rainbow Laces campaign, there’s both a cause to be passionate about – and a brand that demands a mischievous response. Perfect storm.

But it’d be sad if on day one, we decided brilliant creative diversification could only come through the fated meeting of great cause and great client. Surely not only risk-taking clients get risk-taking work?

So, the question quickly became one of how we could create the environment and context for diversity.

Are we more likely to find a risky approach when we’re in a place of adversity? Does diversification come in response to a tough situation, but it’s hard to find when all things are rosy? Or, does true diversification only come from integration? While that at first sounds like a paradox somehow, there was real consensus that without a cross-agency team working together to agree the problem and create the solution to that problem together, diversity in output is rarely going to happen smoothly.

Quickly we agreed two big things; creative diversity will only come from confidence and trust.

Confidence, that’s the thing we have to do and that’s the right thing to do. And we need trust to build that confidence.

That’s where Strategy comes in. In no particular order, here were some suggestions as to how to sell a more diverse approach:

- Powerful articulation of problem & opportunity.

- Brief balancing constraints & latitude.

- Prove the case for doing it with some killer maths posing as a model of the opportunity

- Hand hold. Firmly.

- Start with a shared ambition to challenge the way it's always been: generate the imperative to action; make inaction the less appealing option

But when it comes down to it, if diversity isn't part of the brief, briefing and expectation at the outset (on all sides), we’ll never get it as an output.

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DAY 1 – LUCKY GENERALS ‘RAINBOW LACES’

Host: David Wilding from PHD Media

Strategist: Andy Nairn from Lucky Generals

Live Twitter debate (#IPAStrategy) at 13:00 today with Grey's Leo Rayman and Mother's Katie Mackay.

Watch the video:

Last week I was lucky enough to chat with Andy Nairn, founding partner at Lucky Generals, about the story behind Paddy Power and Stonewall’s #RBGF campaign.

As well as being easily my favourite campaign of last year (something I talked about at the time on PHD’s blog) it was also a brilliantly and diversely executed idea.

I was hoping that Andy would be able to shine a light on some of the things that helped to create such a diverse idea and so it proved. Below is an extract from our chat.  It doesn’t come close to doing justice to what was said in a fascinating conversation but hopefully it provides something we can all learn from in the quest for more diverse work.

  How did you help your client to buy a diverse idea like #RBGF?

I know it sounds sycophantic but Paddy Power really are a fantastic and unusual client. They have a very informal way of working which is much less about written briefs and more about interesting and provocative conversations. You genuinely never feel that it’s a “them and us” relationship.

They like to come to us with “thought starters” which are half formed ideas essentially. And we take this as the start point and build from there. It helps to shortcut the process and get to good ideas much more quickly without a 4 page brief and client approval processes and all the things that come with that.

But importantly that’s all that they are – thought starters for our thoughts, inputs and builds. There isn’t any sense of “we’re doing this, make it happen”. They’re very much part of the team rather than “the client” in that sense.  

They’re also really good at getting a diverse squad together – in this case the campaign was very much a joint effort between ourselves, CP+B, M2M and the client team – plus some key partners.

  And how did #RBGF specifically come about?

Paddy Power are all about making mischief on behalf of the underdog.

Tackling homophobia in football was a natural fit with this mission and the idea of doing something with rainbow laces emerged very early in the process.  But at first, it was a rather unformed thought that needed a lot of definition.

So pretty quickly we turned our attention to exactly what the idea was and how we could get maximum impact out of it. Do we sell laces to football fans? Do we send them to just one player? Every player? Do we send them to clubs or to the players? What period should we run the campaign over? And when should it run? You realise very quickly that this stuff - the stuff that sounds small - is actually the stuff that makes it really good and makes all the difference to the overall outcome.

In the end we sent rainbow laces to every single professional club in Britain. We had to get the names and addresses of every kit man at every club to make this happen and got them to sign for them so nobody could say that they didn’t get them. For the top clubs we filmed them being delivered. And then we made mini videos out of this. This is what I mean by the small stuff. Every detail thought about in minute detail. You can’t just leave it at high level strategy and then let go.

  #RBGF was a collaboration between Paddy Power and Stonewall which initially looked like an unusual tie-up on the surface. How did that come about? And how did you create a shared team responsibility?

We knew that we needed a “why” from the perspective of the public to explain why Paddy Power were getting behind this. Being a bookmaker we got somebody at Paddy Power to calculate the odds that none of the 5,000 professional footballers in the UK was gay. The odds were and are of course ridiculous and this became our intro to the idea if you like. But we wanted to work with a partner who would bring credibility and passion to the campaign and was as comfortable being outspoken and telling it like it is as Paddy Power. Stonewall were the perfect partner and getting them involved was a really important part of the campaign’s success. It also meant that people couldn’t take offence on Stonewall’s behalf.

Once they were onboard it was vital that we got the tone of voice spot on for both brands and that we got to a line (and a hashtag given the importance of Twitter in creating momentum behind this) that encapsulated the whole idea. “Right behind gay footballers” was at once a celebratory call to action and a provocative double entendre: we presented it to Paddy Power and Stonewall together at the same time and that really helped with buy-in. The hashtag itself (#RBGF) was a bit of a gamble as it didn’t mean anything in its own right but we wanted something that was campaigning and involving and it paid off.

  I loved the ‘live’ nature of #RBGF and the sense that you weren’t entirely sure at the beginning of the week how the campaign would develop and what you’d end up with at the end of the week. How did you pull the right kind of people together to make it happen? And what ways of working did you have to put in place to ensure it did?

At the beginning of the week we had activity planned with Metro, Twitter & Talksport and we had Joey Barton lined up to highlight and tweet about the campaign. We also had a rough sense of what messages we’d put out over the week but we also hoped that we’d be tearing this up and changing it as the week went along according to reactions to the campaign and this is how it turned out.

We knew it was really important that we created a sense of momentum for the #RBGF movement by highlighting the people getting involved during the week and reacting and responding to high profile things that were happening around it.

To make this happen we created a ‘newsroom’ for the week where we all met twice a day everyday. People talk a lot about adopting a ‘newsroom’ way of working and sometimes you feel it’s being done without much of a reason to do it but when you’ve got a campaign like this it’s really necessary and it worked really well.

As well as the clubs and the players we also had a massive hit list of people in around football, politics and entertainment to try to get involved - ranging from Stephen Fry to Gary Lineker who wore his laces presenting Match of the Day. We had a lot of fun with it too - even getting the lead singer of Black Lace to come out in support of Rainbow Laces.

We also had a lot of work in reserve ready to go. Work with an angrier tone for later in the week if clubs weren’t responding to the campaign. But in the end we didn’t ever need to run it. In one sense this was a shame as they would have made some cracking posters! But we knew that wasn’t the type of campaign we were looking to create so you just have to learn to let go.

What we did get from a few clubs was that they didn’t have the ‘time’ to get their players to wear the laces before the weekend so we took this with a bit of mischief and created some ads showing how it only took 2 minutes to change your laces!

  And finally, with hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently?

Produced more laces! But maybe we’ll do that next time… 

Question for the crowd...

Is today's diversified landscape affecting your strategy and briefing process? If so, how?