You’ve heard the expression, “A good idea doesn’t care who has it.”.
But whenever anyone sees a good idea we automatically assume it came from the creative department.
Well I find some of the best ideas come from the media department.
These guys are operators and wide-boys, so they’re always naturally looking for an opening, an edge.
A stroke they can pull.
This happened to us when we had Channel 5 as a client.
Walker Media was the media independent working on the account.
One day their CEO, Phil Georgiadis came to us with an idea.
He said, “I’ve been reading Channel 5’s football schedule for the season.
I notice they’ve got a brilliant Liverpool game scheduled for the same night ITV has a boring Leed’s game.”
We said, “Shall we take out some ads?”
Phil said, “Better than that, I’ve bought some perimeter boards around the edge of Leed’s pitch.”
Phil said, “The perimeter boards are on screen throughout the whole match.
The Leeds game will be really boring.
We can tell the audience to switch over and watch Liverpool on Channel 5.”
Everyone went quiet.
We let the full impact of what Phil was saying slowly sink in.
ITV is the biggest commercial TV channel in the UK.
Channel 5 would be getting their main competitor to show a 90 minute ad for them.
We would be using ITV’s cameras, ITV’s airtime, ITV’s audience.
Encouraging ITV viewers to switch over to Channel 5 to watch a better game.
ITV would never accept paid-for advertising from Channel 5.
They would never let their airtime be used by a competitor, even if they paid.
And yet here they were, doing it for free.
And nothing they could do about it.
A brilliantly creative idea.
And it didn’t come from the creative department.