Imagine you're a marketing director (I know some of you reading this actually are), and you're planning a campaign for your product five months ahead .
It's December, mid-winter in the UK, so you're already dreaming of spring breaking through in April. Ideal sunny conditions to launch your first-ever outdoor poster campaign. The media is booked and locked in.
Then comes Covid-19. Everyone's in lockdown. No-one's going out. No-one's going to see your outdoor campaign now.
So what do you do?
If you are Emily Snacks -- a make of "wildly flavoursome and temptingly crunchy snacks made with real veg & fruit" -- you power on.
"If we’re going to take the piss out of ourselves and say we’ve had a bit of misfortune with timing, then I’m happy to do it,” explained Nurture Brands’s managing director, Adam Draper.
He told the media company they didn't want their money back, they were going to go for it. “As long as we look truthful and not like we’re trying to capitalise on the coronavirus, because that’s really disingenuous, then great let’s do it.”
And do it, they did, scrapping the original messages ("Ditch Dull, Eat Bold") and coming out with variations of their misfortune self-deprecatingly. The result is a delightful in-the-moment campaign, capturing the zeitgeist perfectly.
Draper makes the point that sometimes you need to go offline to go online. Meaning this humble outdoor campaign has driven an online reaction and sharing way beyond their dreams, with further irony being use of the #stayhome hashtag -- for an outdoor campaign.
And that's what happens when you Ditch Dull. Bravo!
(This campaign is just one of the marketing pivots featured in Stu Lloyd's book 'Pivot Power'.)