Posts by Ricardo Pirroni
Cuprinol. Saving a wonderful old brand from the scrapheap.
Cuprinol from i2i on Vimeo. It began almost costing my job and ended with an IPA Advertising Effectiveness award. In the early 80’s Cuprinol was one of those DIY household names that had become desperately unfashionable simply by virtue of having been around for so long. Then owned by the German Berger-Magicote giant, there was…
Read MoreWhy was Ken Livingstone hanging on my words?
1985. London’s future mayor, Ken Livingstone is paragliding outside the Houses of Parliament,in a vain attempt to persuade Margaret Thatcher not to close the GLC down, under a campaign theme I wrote for the Greater London Council. 1980. I’m a Group Head at Norman Craig and Kummel; the agency was invited to present to the GLC,…
Read MoreHow to beat attention fatigue with staff safety notices.
Behind the scenes, there may be more safety notices to the yard in the Underground network than anywhere else in the world. So how do you get general messages noticed? We did it with a themed poster campaign, showing each subject as a spoof film poster. Not only did awareness of each issue rise, but…
Read MoreBefore he became the darling of American late night television, we turned Craig Ferguson’s life upside down.
I got a call from a media pal to ask me to meet the Bembom brothers, two Dutch theme park entrepreneurs who had bought and renovated the Dreamland White Knuckle Park in Margate, with its world famous roller-coaster and some terrifying new rides; could we do a radio campaign, get the public to fill the…
Read MoreYou’re never so big you don’t need help (sometimes)
You’d think a group the size of Royal Dutch Shell would have suppliers coming out of their ears. So when a little birdie told us they were stuck to deliver a set of conference materials on a tight timeframe, we only half believed it. Next thing we knew, we had a linkup with The Hague,…
Read MoreEnergy industry comms is a high wire act.
The energy industry is global, literal and extremely sensitive. It is also vibrant, exciting and constantly developing. As agency for South Hook Gas, the UK distribution arm of the Qatar’s LNG Gas operations, our challenge was to develop a communications identity and strategy that worked as well and as positively in the Gulf as in…
Read MoreTry the window cleaner on your kitchen floor
When a client goes safe the upshot is often sorry. For years Colgate-Palmolive had produced an extensive range of Ajax household cleaners, all containing much the same ingredients but with different labels, for use on floors, windows, kitchens, cookers and bathrooms. Eventually they decided to rationalize the centre ground into one product – hooray! The think-tank…
Read MoreWhich is more important, talking to your brand or your customer?
It’s the oldest conundrum in marketing, and the reason most agencies exist. Clients have a product to sell, in which they are (usually) justifiably proud. But is the exclusive display of that product’s virtues enough to draw a demand response from its market? Maybe it isn’t. But the budgets and investment in the automotive trade are…
Read MoreHow boring can a corporate inter-departmental newsletter actually be?
They are almost hard-wired as tranquillisers, comprising, as they tend to, a mishmash of sales figures, performance targets, teamwork palliatives and shortfall arse-kicks, all in the shadow of a zeppelin corporate ego. To add to this, Cisco’s Emerging Markets department was as global and as disparate as the international community could be. Bringing all this…
Read MoreBig ideas call for big headlines.
No-one wants to read your ad, sorry! No-one wants to know what you’ve got to sell or what you want to say. Ultimately, all anyone is interested in is … themselves. But talk to that bit of them and you might find you’ve held their interest long enough for your message to slip in under…
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