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đ˝ Go Odd Or Go Home - How To Make Unignorable Ad Campaigns
Marketing Unfiltered 7 - Harry Guides You Through Odd Advertising Successes
Happy Friday! Youâre going to enjoy this weekâs Marketing UnfilteredâŚ
Thank you for the brilliant emails and LinkedIn love for Johnâs CFO approved, investing in brand take last week.
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Âť Onto this week: we see the return of Harry and he writes just like Harry can on - how ad campaigns have to be unignorableâŚ

There's a hell of a lot of flim-flam, hubris and overexuberance on LinkedIn, and marketers are more guilty of glorifying themselves than most.
Inflated numbers, phoney awards, induced reviews or just self-serving opinions that humble-brag their way to likes, comments and PR puff pieces.
What's often (increasingly?) forgotten is that the only metric that should matter to marketers is:-
"Does your work work?"
We have numerous KPIs that can help us understand whether a campaign 'works' or doesn't. Prompted and unprompted awareness and NPS scores for brand, incremental sales volumes, CPA, conversion, net revenue for direct response - the list goes on. And on...
Whatever KPI you're trying to hit, none of them relate to whether the world actually likes the campaign.
A Look Back
Back in 2014 I worked for Mecca Bingo's digital business in Gibraltar. We appointed an agency, isobel, to create a direct response TV ad campaign but one which would also put Mecca on the map at a brand level, too. If memory serves, we encouraged them to go as weird as possible. When they pitched concepts, we asked them to double down on the oddness.
We wanted standout. We wanted to make people talk. We wanted something unignorable.
What we got was a fake doctor (think clipboard holding, glasses wearing, white coated lady, as per generic healthcare ads) introducing a twerking cactus.
It was batshit, it was nonsense, and it took a hell of a lot of selling to get it past the Mecca bosses back in Maidenhead.
In Marketing hubris terms, it was never going to win any awards, and its (purposefully) homespun production values made it feel a bit crap (it should be noted the agency and production company NAILED the brief across the board in this respect). I wasn't proud of the work in a 'Look, world, at the art we've created and rejoice!' way.
But I WAS proud of the results.
Double-digit new account openings, significant brand awareness and salience uplift, increased new customer deposits.
Tick, Tick and Tick.
I often talk to teams about hitting the 'F*ck It' button - to go outside the norm with their creative design, to make things that are entertaining, amusing or just so strange they're different, unavoidable and therefore MEMORABLE.
In my recent past I was marketing mobile, PC and console games. The mobile App games industry is a high-volume âtest and learnâ exercise game played at a million miles an hour, so the team was building hundreds of ad creatives for the App networks every week. More often than not, the high-performing creatives werenât the ones we slaved over or were universally enamoured with â they were shite, from a creative craft perspective but unusual, eye-catching, funny, often brain-scrambling shite, which was why they outperformed the polished executions by 10X. They stopped gamers scrolling at a million MPH in their tracks and tempted them with intrigue into installing our game.
Whenever the team got stuck with a game that wasnât converting, it was these âmother of inventionâ ad creatives that came out of nowhere and just⌠worked.
Consumer Recall Struggle
Consumers only remember around 10% of TV ads after 24 hours (Provoke Insights summer 2023 report), so your ads have to work ten times harder to get a full return on your media spend.
Whether you're running DRTV or brand campaigns, you can't get anywhere if your campaign is ignored.
Charles Vallance (the V of VCCP fame) said:-
âThe human brain is not designed to remember, itâs designed to forget. The greatest brands understand thisâ.
Vallanceâs agency runs what it calls âThe Memory Indexâ alongside Cowry, a behavioural psychology consultancy, in which they review the memorability of ads both past and present to ascertain what it is about them that sticks in consumerâs minds. Their rationale for this expansive research is clear, as they state unequivocally:-
âAds not aired since the 1970s can still sit fresh in peopleâs memoriesâ.
Today, the standout TV ads when measured by effectiveness share common traits of being different, often unusual. They werenât created in siloed data farms â more likely, they came when the creative team was two pints in and panic shopping for an idea with a deadline fast approaching.
A quick browse of creative effectiveness platform System 1âs âAd of the Weekâ chart for 2024 shows itâs littered with examples of the unusual, the absurd and the unexpected. Haribo, Irn Bru, Paddy Power and Warburtons all deservedly feature, and all are A/ funny and B/ unexpected.
In his 2012 article for Forbes âWhat Makes A TV Commercial Memorable and Effective?â Steve Olenski polled a number of industry pros, with my favourite response being:-
âA TV spot has to score high in 2 areas to be memorable: sheer entertainment value and disruption/ thought-provoking abilityâ
In short it turns out that âsurprise and delightâ, that old creative brief clichĂŠ, really is the magic formula, if executed well.
And that, inevitably, is where I must pump the brakes of enthusiasm and doff my reality hat towards the inevitable â the tipping point. It is, of course, possible to go too strange. To try and be too funny. To go a few inches beyond the perfect balance. This year alone, Pot Noodleâs âSlurpingâ ad by Adam&EveDDB was amazing for recall but caused a slew of complaints by disgusted viewers.
Ricky Gervais & VodkaâŚ
Then thereâs my personal nemesis campaign â Ricky Gervais acting as a smug, know it all, âChrist arenât I a kidder, eh? EH?!!â mouthpiece for Dutch Barn Vodka in their self-proclaimed âWorst Advert Everâ. In an effort to emulate Clooney, MacGregor, Dan Ackroyd et al in making billions as the owner/ ambassador of a spirits brand, Gervaisâs campaign falls woefully short, using a broken interpretation of reverse psychology to flag the downsides of alcohol abuse. In an ad selling vodka. Using a fake doctor in a white lab coat (which rings a bell, somehowâŚ).
Thereâs something quite meta about having the balls to call your campaign âthe worst ad everâ, meaning for it to be self-deprecating but then accidentally - almost endearingly - making the actual worst ad in history. Gervais is one of the few men who could pull it off â I mean, if smug were a superpower, heâd be God in the Marvel Universe.
Boring Or Brand FameâŚ
If you want brand fame, and you want to drive any consumer action whatsoever, you can't do it by being boring. Generic is your enemy, safety is a threat and humour is a weapon.
The great ad luminary David Ogilvy captured this sentiment perfectly:-
âThe best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possibleâ.
You want to stand out? Go different, go funny and go odd.
Just not too oddâŚ
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Have a great weekend.
Thanks,
Supporting Read: If you want to get ahead for December and 2025, here are 11 ways to do so with a free template
PS. Remember if youâve missed any previous newsletters you can enjoy
Johnâs take on - Brand Investment Your CFO Cannot Reject
My take on - Political Intelligence The Game To Be Won For Marketing & Growth Leaders
Simonâs take on - Organisational Cultures Is The Critical Component To Marketing Success
Milaâs take on - Selling the Marketing Dream to Non-Marketers
Harryâs take on - If Marketing Dies, Itâll Be Assisted Suicide
Nickâs take on - Account Board Management To Win Brand Vs Performance
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