Childhood obesity is a serious problem.
In the UK alone, it’s estimated 25% of boys and girls are overweight.
One of the main causes is snacking: sweets, crisps, ice cream, chocolates.
Usually the kids aren’t even hungry, they just eat out of boredom.
Often they snack while they’re walking round the shops with Mum.
So it’s nice to hear a shop is finally doing something about it.
In Australia, Woolworths has 961 supermarkets.
In their stores they’ve introduced a “Free fruit for kids” policy.
Children can take a piece of fruit from a display as they walk around with their mums.
Apples, pears, bananas, all of it healthy.
So they’ve got something to chew on instead of crisps or chocolate bars as they walk around.
It’s better for their teeth, better for their weight, better for their health generally.
You’d think everyone would be pleased.
You’d think.
But of course we all know that isn’t the way it works with ideas.
There’s always someone whose job it is to be negative.
To find something wrong with an idea.
No matter how much everyone else thinks it’s a good idea it’s their job to find a reason, however trivial, not to do it.
One online Australian news outlet gleefully carries the headline “Woolies ‘Free Fruit For Kids’ initiative backfires”.
They’ve managed to ‘find’ three people who have a problem with it.
Three people who wrote in with negative comments.
Someone, called Cathy, said: “Unmonitored foods is a bad idea”.
Someone called Svedka said: “That’s how you get worms, kids with dirty hands touching things”.
Someone called Andrew said: “My mother once slipped on a banana peel and broke her knee”.
Woolworths is the biggest food retailer in Australia.
Millions of people shop in their stores every week and lots of them bring their children.
So you would have thought, if you wanted to combat child obesity, this was a good place to start.
But the news outlet doesn’t see it as their job to help.
They see it as their job to find a problem no one else has spotted.
That’s why they managed to ‘find’ three people out of millions.
To give them an excuse to run a headline that sounds like a major flaw in Woolworth’s idea.
In order to make themselves look like investigative journalists.
They ignored the big picture and concentrated on the trivia.
We’ve all presented ideas in front of people like that.
People whose job it is to be negative.
To spot the one tiny, possible flaw in an idea that no one else has seen.
To totally ignore the big picture and concentrate on the trivia.
To make themselves look clever.
They are usually the dullest person in the room.
And, coincidentally, so is any idea they’re involved in.
Because they concentrate on the one tiny thing that might possibly go wrong.
At the cost of everything that would go right.
Yup, there’s always one.
Yes. Usually before an idea gets anywhere near a client.
They’re usually called planners.
Or junior suits.
A junior suit once insisted the copy should have points a to k.
Surprisingly I managed to do it.
But j s rejected it because copy to him should be from points a to k.
But I had jumped from a to g to k to b.
Surely it don’t matter if I do all the blues on a Rubik’s Cube before
I do the reds.
What’s important is getting the colours right.
But this creative suit – management at some shops insist we’re all
creative – thinks process/sequence should also play a part.
Spot on as always.
“I just have one concern” has unfortunately become the norm when an idea is presented to account teams / planners.
They ignore the nine things that are right and focus on one thing that, in their opinion, is wrong.
I have a question for you Dave…
When you had your own agencies and you approved work, when creatives were taking an account team through the work, where they allowed to act as ECDs and knock down ideas that you had already approved?
I can just see the scenario if you had to present this before you published it.
ACCOUNT MAN: “Wouldn’t ‘There’s always three’ make a more accurate title?”
Pete,
It depended on the validity of the reasons.
If it was for sound business reasons then I’d listen.
If it was their personal preference, or an account handling convention then I would go to their superior and we’d discuss it.
Junior people don’t get to turn work down of course.
They are allowed input.
If the input is consistently helpful they are promoted.
If the input is consistently harmful then they’re at the wrong agency
Thanks Dave.
I think creative people are generally open to criticism if it’s constructive and it will have a positive impact on the work.
But often it seems lik people comment for the sake of saying something, so they look like they’ve contributed in the meeting.
I don’t disagree with the sentiment of Dave’s article but as a former copywriter turned journalist, I would make a couple of points. I doubt very much if the reporters thought the article made them look like Woodward and Bernstein. More likely they had a hole to fill in the newspaper (and/or website), no time, and no reporters to do the job properly by going to Woolies and see what people actually thought. So they lifted a few extremely selective quotes off a blog, and hey presto, ten minutes later the hole is filled.
There’s an old definition of news that goes something like this: ‘News is what someone, somewhere, doesn’t want you to know. The rest is advertising.’
This Woolies story is not a great example but it very much is the reporter’s job to try and kick holes in any idea. If they are no holes to be kicked, as appears to be the case here, the reader will soon spot that.
Which comes back to the point of Dave’s article. As he sort of says in his reply to Pete’s question, you have to look at what your critics say dispassionately –because they might be right. It doesn’t matter why they said it. They can be as rude or as negative as anything, but the only thing that need concern anyone is whether they were right.
If you can do that without your own ego getting in the way, you may still think you were right the first time, or you may accept they have a point. Either way you’ll have learned something, and improved.
And I doubt Woolies worried too much about the story. As one of the critics of the scheme put on that blog, ‘it’s just free advertising.’ As if that is a bad thing.
@Mark
Is it a reporters job to kick holes in any idea, or is it to report on the idea? balanced and fair?
although i sympathise, we all have to churn out sh!t we’re not proud of, but whether you apply your personal values is a different question.
Excellent piece as always Dave. In modern media it seems that three’s a trend; explaining somewhat the proliferation of “we can’t even have Christmas any more” articles each Christmas. Has anyone actually met one of these anti-Christmas campaigners?
The paper in question here is a Murdoch rag that makes its dough out of being against stuff; most notably any positive progress on anything to do with the environment or welfare recipients. Yet still they insist on plastering themselves with the ironic tagline “we’re for Sydney”.
Cheers for the good read.
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