The Weekend Mumbo: The risks and rewards of creatives taking on s*** clients
Welcome to the Weekend Mumbo.
We’re trying something new this week – posting the piece on the website straight away.
We’ll still send out the Saturday morning email letting you know that it’s been published. But by directing you to the website to read it, it means we can add some multimedia elements like the video today without fear of them being formatted oddly in certain inboxes. There may be images or graphs in the future.
It also means you can comment straight away if you want rather than having to email back (which you can still do if you so wish). While I’m on comments, they came back in a bit of a big way this week. More on that below.
Cynics may say it will direct a bit more traffic to Mumbrella on a Saturday. If it does, that’s a bonus as well.
We’ll trial this for a little while before we make a more permanent call, so let us know what you think. Moving on to today’s topic.
Acclaimed comedian and actress Miriam Margolyes has played a wizard, a nun, a queen and even a fly, but I reckon her latest starring role as a bowel, imploring Aussies to give a s***, is her most important yet.
The challenging character, unveiled this week, is courtesy of Bowel Cancer Australia’s latest campaign – the final instalment of a bold three-part TVC series, shining a light on what is arguably an unsexy disease.
Marketing breast cancer? Show me someone who looks like my mum and throw a bit of pink in the mix. Childhood cancer? Bald littlies looking happy and hopeful will get me reaching for my wallet.
Bowel cancer? What a s*** client that must be to land.
Miriam Margolyes is a bowel in Bowel Cancer Australia’s new campaign. Picture: CelebHeights.com
“It’s completely exciting when you get a client like this,” AIRBAG executive producer Martin Box told me about landing the account.
“Honestly, I think these are the best briefs in a way because they’re challenging – it’s a pretty tough sell – but there’s a lot of freedom given to us by the client to explore different approaches. It’s a dream.”
Box explained that AIRBAG began work by taking the charity’s key messages that needed to be conveyed and then came up with a range of ideas to get them across to a hard-to-reach audience in “the most powerful way we could”.
“And they were open to pushing the boundaries a bit,” he said of Bowel Cancer Australia.
Margolyes is the instantly captivating voice of a bowel within a glass statue body, urging the eyes to look towards the toilet, the hands to take a sample of anything dodgy, and the brain to “give a s***” about her.
“We wanted something humorous but still quite punchy,” Box said, adding that the script was developed in consultation with Bowel Cancer and Australia.
“Then Miriam brought her own flavour to it as well.”
When it comes to selling an unsexy or confronting product – or cause, in this instance – he said humour is the best and probably only approach.
“We’re talking about illness and potentially death, but you don’t want to scare people,” Box said.
“We felt humour was the best way of engaging the audience initially, then coming in with the hard messaging. There’s no point turning people off by being too confronting.
“I mean, that humour allows us to basically talk about s***.”
The TVCs are complemented by an outdoor campaign using buses. The media agency is Assembled Media.
Bowel Cancer Australia marketing and communications manager Stephanie Bansemer-Brown said the charity and health awareness space in Australia is incredibly congested and getting cut-through is hard enough with the ‘prettiest of causes’.
One involving a part of the body people do not like to talk about, performing functions that many find awkward to discuss, presents a constant challenge, Bansemer-Brown, herself a survivor of stage three bowel cancer, conceded.
“The cost of not getting our message across isn’t just lost revenue for research… it’s life and death.
“So, we’re combining humour with a serious message. We’re trying to challenge people to look at this issue differently, and throwing a few funny lines in courtesy of a globally recognised comedian.
“It doesn’t matter what it is – a cause, a product, a service – being boring doesn’t work, particularly if it’s a really competitive space.”
It’s not the first time the charity has turned to provocative humour to reach its target market, with the 2019 Golden Nugget campaign from BWM dentsu delivering exceptional results. An online quiz, raising awareness of bowel cancer symptoms and encouraging young Aussies to check their stools, gave the chance to win a 24-carat solid gold poop.
“The engagement was outstanding,” Bansemer-Brown said. “I think we need to be really brave about poo and not shy away from it – our campaigns certainly achieve that.”
Also launching this week was the first global campaign from direct-to-consumer toilet paper brand Who Gives A Crap, with a TVC, billboards and out-of-home ads.
Uncrap The World calls on us to save the planet and tackle climate change “from the bottom up”, Luke Martin, executive creative director at 72andSunny, said.
The agency worked with director Stef Hunt from Exit Films to make an epic film to talk directly to the toilet paper-purchasing decisionmaker – the bum.
“While people are feeling overwhelmed by the climate doom and gloom, facing a new climate issue every day, we wanted to bring some light and cheekiness to a heavy topic,” Who Gives A Crap head of brand management Maria Chilewicz said.
“The campaign shows that our heroes walk amongst us – or behind us – already. This is our call to bums. Bums have always worn the pants and now they’re going to uncrap the world.”
Products or services that are embarrassing for consumers to purchase are especially tricky to market, said Dr Sandy Fitzgerald, senior lecturer in economics, finance and marketing at RMIT.
“Thorough market research will help marketers to understand the challenges that their consumers perceive in the act of purchasing their products and then find a relatable way to communicate the core message to them.”
Finding an audience isn’t hard, with “brands spoilt for choice these days” with ways of targeting consumers via various mediums. Crafting a creative and impactful message is the challenge, she said.
“If brands know their target audience and media consumption habits and do the appropriate market research to understand consumer ‘pain points’ regarding their purchase decision journey, they will be in a stronger position to craft an appropriate message for the appropriate media channels to engage with their target audience.”
A collaboration between clients with an open mind and creatives with a brave approach to humour can leave everyone feeling as happy as a pig in s***.
Rest of the week
Well, well. Aren’t you a vocal bunch? Comments earlier in the week from veteran adman Sean Cummins about the benefits of working from home being exaggerated, calling for a return to the office for the sake of creativity and sanity, sparked a barrage of comments.
Many disagreed, and passionately so. A few brave souls agreed with Cummins’ points.
As the debate raged, we ran two other op-eds – one about the working week as we know it being well and truly dead, from LinkedIn APAC’s head of channel sales Lara Brownlow, and a piece from Thinkerbell’s Adam Ferrier asking employers to think about what they’re doing to lure workers back.
As someone who’s both desperately lazy and prone to bouts of loneliness, I can see both sides. My view on flexibility is pretty similar to that of Sefiani boss Robyn Sefiani, who I spoke to for a piece about striking the right balance.
It was no doubt a deflating week in Seven’s content department, with the flat launch of its new balloon-making competition Blow Up to just 288,000 metro viewers.
No amount of creativity from the enthusiastic contestants or hot air from the network’s publicity department could save the show from bursting. The rest of its season is now popping off to 7flix.
Signing off
And finally, a farewell to our very own Kalila Welch. Her departure and my arrival are not linked, I assure you. She is off to finish her Masters following an envy inducing jaunt through Europe. She will be sorely missed.
Enjoy the weekend.
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topics
72andSunny
Assembled Media
Bowel Cancer Australia
Luke Martin
Martin Box
Miriam Margolyes
The Weekend Mumbo
Weekend Mumbo
Who Gives A Crap
My pet hate is getting a few paragraphs into an email with compelling content and encountering a mandatory ‘Read more’ link to a website. This often happens when I’m on a country train or in some other situation with weak and/or intermittent internet connectivity. There’s enough download speed to read the text of emails but not enough to click through to the web page.
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