Tearing up the junk mail
A lot of the time getting these things to work is more about self-belief and the right environment or culture than the brilliant campaign. Persuading the outside world that you are doing a great job and are therefore worthy of their financial support or custom is not nearly as hard as persuading the people inside the organisation. The Marketing Department may well have the next ground breaking idea but if the Head of Finance doesn’t ‘get it’ they can put up blocks and it will never get off the ground. I think many of my hardest ‘wins’ were getting fellow colleagues or other gate keepers to be brave, take a chance and believe it could happen.

When we eventually got the‘damaged’ fundraising pack to the RNIB they loved it, backed it and it raised lots of money. But the biggest fight in that one was getting a production guy to talk to the Royal Mail about doing something different. Somewhere along the line, this guy had lost the belief that you could do something that radical. It may have been a fear of failure – which will paralyse anyone. It took a lot of gentle hand holding to get him to take the idea on board. Eventually he did, he persuaded the Royal Mail to really support it, and when it became a success, he was as proud as punch. Getting him to believe he could do it – that was the real challenge.

Art Director: Tim Britnell, Copywriter: Ingrid Birchell Hughes, Creative Director: Kate Woodford.