Rolling up the sleeves and pitching in together
This was Oxfam’s campaign to keep the Make Poverty History momentum going and get thousands of supporters to sign up for the next step in ending poverty. It won Gold for Brand Building Strategy in the DMA 2006 awards, was integrated as part of the Oxfam GB brand and brought in over 400,000 new supporters.

Some how we had to persuade agencies to return a pitch for a full media campaign in two weeks and we had to get something that was ready to use. After the pitch we would be in production time for a full media launch, there would be no time to refine. This was a tall order — time to chuck the rule book out.

After refining the strategy with the Fundraising Director I sent the brief out with the offer that Oxfam’s Creative Director (me) would spend as much time with them as they wanted during the development process. This raised eyebrows and hopes in turn. Unsurprisingly several of the invited agencies said that there was no way they could deliver in two weeks but three said yes and that was the end of my life for the next three months. Two of the agencies really took advantage of my presence during the two week process as I spent time with them helping them to understand the brand and going through initial ideas with them. I also spent time with the Oxfam Directors who were on the pitch board, coaching them on how to be positive and maximise the pitch as a growing ideas session rather than as a judgement session. I was worried that we wouldn’t have a pret-a-porter and I needed them to see potential in anything we saw on pitch day. As it turned out, the coaching wasn’t needed because there were two excellent campaigns ready to buy and we went with I’m In.

Having been on pitches on both sides, I don’t think I will hesitate to chuck out the rule book again, I think there are more than a few agencies and organisations that might be ready to do the same. Trust and transparity. Very very important.