Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.
Join Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, founders of the award-winning Prohibition PR, as they sit down with industry leaders to dissect the career-ending f*ck-ups they’d rather forget. The show moves past any pretty vanity metrics to uncover the brutal, honest truths behind marketing disasters, from £30,000 SEO black holes and completely failed companies, to social media crises that went globally viral for all the wrong reasons.
We don't just celebrate the f*ck-ups; we extract the tactical blueprints you need to avoid them yourself. If you are a business owner, or a CMO looking for a competitive advantage that only comes from real-world experience, this is your weekly masterclass in resilience and strategy.
- Listen for: Raw stories from top brands, ex-McKinsey strategists, and industry disruptors.
- Learn from: The errors that cost thousands and the recoveries that saved careers.
- Get ahead by: Turning other people's nasty disasters into your unfair market advantage.
If you have a story to tell and would like to appear on the show, tell us your biggest marketing mistake and drop us a line.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes
How Did Norwich City FC and Samaritans Create a Viral Mental Health Campaign?
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This episode of Campaign Crunch takes a heartfelt turn with Emily Moult from our team at Prohibition, who guides us through the stirring Norwich City FC and Samaritans collaboration. This campaign is a masterclass in achieving social impact through storytelling, proving that a video with a modest budget can still pack an emotional punch. Learn how simplicity in messaging can spark crucial conversations about men's mental health.
As seasoned pros in social media and public relations, we're not just here to talk shop—we're here to share the kind of insights and inspirations that ignite creativity within our team. Emily's account of how the campaign navigated the delicate theme of suicide prevention and urged action through its narrative is a testament to the power of marketing with a conscience. So, brace yourself for a session that's rich in learnings and laden with the kind of practical wisdom that could transform your brand's approach to meaningful marketing. Join us for a special 15-minute journey into the heart of campaign storytelling.
Norwich City x Samaritans video
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Welcome to Campaign Crunch , our concise companion to socially unacceptable . Here , in this shorter version of the show , we'll delve into the anatomy of real-world marketing campaigns , dissecting successes , missteps and everything in between , all in just 15 minutes . I'm Chris Norton and , as always , I'm joining with my business partner , Will Ockenden , and together we bring our experience of working in social media , marketing , content creation and public relations . Each episode of Campaign Crunch will tackle a specific campaign or crisis , particularly examining its strategy , execution and , most importantly , the key takeaways for you . We'll analyse both the viral sensations and social media horror shows , extracting those actionable insights that'll save you time marketing your own brand .
Speaker 1And I'll be honest with you , the whole reason we're doing this is because we do it with our team . I've got a team of 30 creatives here . We get together once a week and someone will present a campaign that really has inspired them over the last month . So why do we share campaigns internally every week ? I'll tell you why because we want to share expertise , inspirational stories and just best practice , so we can share the best work and in great work that you guys are doing out there . So we sometimes just look at what's happening , share it in the team , and I felt that that would be a brilliant thing to bring to this show . So I hope you enjoy Campaign Crunch . It's a much smaller , shorter version of socially unacceptable 15 minutes . Here we go . Well , welcome to the first . Well , no , hang on . Welcome to the inaugural episode of that doesn't mean first .
Speaker 2That's why I said it . Why did you change it from first , though ?
Speaker 3He's trying to sound smarter .
Speaker 2He was dissatisfied with the word first .
Speaker 1He's first not good enough . Shall I go ? Inaugural or first oh my God , I quite like inaugural .
Speaker 2This is not a good start .
Speaker 1Welcome to the show Right . So in the episode of Creative Crunch we're joined by Emily Moult . Welcome to the show .
Speaker 3Hi , Thanks for having me finally .
Speaker 1So , emily , tell us , tell the listeners what you do for us . I am an account director here at Prohibition , so I work primarily on the consumer clients , mostly FMB , fmcg , yeah yeah good , and today , because it's our first , nobody knows what's going to happen , so you're going to walk us through a campaign that you've shared with the team . We share campaigns each and every week , and the idea is that we share knowledge and expertise and it gets the creative juices flowing . So what campaign have you got for us today ?
Speaker 3I'm going to talk through the Norwich City FC and Samaritans campaign that was launched around World Mental Health Day on the 10th of October last year . It was a video campaign so they led with a video activation . It lived on social and was amplified in the press . It was all around raising awareness of men's mental health , focusing on the theme of suicide prevention and urging people to speak up and seek help . So the video it was recorded in-house and on site at Norwich City FC . So fairly low budget campaign and I don't know if you guys saw it , did you ?
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah . Why don't you explain the narrative of it ? We'll share a link in the show notes .
Speaker 1Will's favourite saying of every social unit except Do we have show notes ? Do we even have ?
Speaker 2show notes . We should have shown Okay , that's good , we've got show notes . We'll share a link in the show notes .
Speaker 1The MicroPod has show notes . Yeah , I'm sure Tyler add it .
Speaker 2I'm sure you've seen it , but why don't you explain the storyline ?
Speaker 3Yeah , essentially it is two guys who come to the football every week , every game . They sit next to each other every time . One of them is more extroverted , quite chatty , looks really cheery and in a great mood , and one of them is a bit more sort of low-key , almost , looks quite sad , quite introverted , and it follows their journey , their interactions , and then at the end it shows a blank seat and it's actually the seat of the more extroverted person who obviously is no longer with us . So extremely emotive topic , quite shocking , safe to say . I cried shock , horror , but for me the simplicity of the campaign made it even more impactful . You know , it's quite a normal I'm doing air quotes , you can't see scene , but I think it brings the message home even more that anyone and everyone around you could be struggling and you might not necessarily know about it . They might not outwardly show that .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think the shocking thing is that it's the guy that you think it isn't going to be that's like a twist , isn't it ? And I did think when I saw this video why Norwich C , was it Norwich C and the Samaritans ? And I was like why ? But it was such a clever put together video .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean they're a relatively low league football club . Are they in the championship ?
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean it's Low league . Sorry to all . The Norwich City fans .
Speaker 2I don't think we've got any listeners in Norwich . Have we Maybe ?
Speaker 3Well , not now . We haven't no , no we certainly haven't now .
Speaker 2But it's certainly . I mean I think the visibility it got was extraordinary and you know , I suppose I mean digging into the distribution then and the amplification of it . It was just a video , was it ? Or was it supported with the broader Combs campaign ?
Speaker 3As far as I know , it was just a video and it sat on X , TikTok and Instagram , so I think it had 43 million total views and that was in the first 48 hours . Amazing so massive 50 million views on X , half a million on TikTok and it also achieved more than 20 pieces of really positive media coverage . So industry titles like famous campaigns , Consumer Nationals , Daily Mail and even the BBC covered it , and then more sort of cult channels like Ladd Bible also covered it . So it was real widespread media coverage .
Speaker 2I mean , it was a true sort of viral piece of content , wasn't it ? I think this is a relatively new trend we're seeing , where people will create an amazing piece of content and that in itself becomes a media story . First and foremost , it was a piece of content not a media story wasn't ?
Speaker 3it yeah , exactly .
Speaker 2And you say 10 bits of national . I'm sure it got way more than that . I mean , it felt like it was . Everyone was talking about it . It was a genuine water cooler moment , wasn't it ?
Speaker 1Everyone you speak to has seen a video , or I just find the fact it makes you think about asking , I suppose , the whole overall messages , even no matter how happy people look out there you need to ask your friends , are you all right ?
Speaker 1Because particularly it was aimed at men . This wasn't it . And men not talking , men just going to football celebrating . It's the ride of the video as well . They're celebrating every goal and basically cogging each other all the way through , and then one of them looks really down , but it turns out that it's the one that looks delighted . That's struggling .
Speaker 2And this idea of kind of playing with the viewer's perception of what's going to happen actually isn't new and there's a tradition of videos that have done similar things . There's one recently I saw a very powerful similar video for Alzheimer's where a woman is sat at a bus stop and there's a guy next to her asking about her baby , and it's a bit of a weird kind of conversation and then it turns out that it's actually her dad who's forgotten that . Yeah , it's very , very moving actually . I think we'll put a link to that , but it feels like this kind of way of playing with the viewer's perceptions just keeps on working .
Speaker 2I mean , years ago the Guardian did a really cool campaign where there's a businessman walking down the street and there's a punk with a mohecan running towards him , screaming , and the audience immediately thinks you know , this was done in the 80s or something . The audience thinks the punk's going to attack him , the punk's going to attack him and then at the last minute he dives towards him and there's something falling from the sky and he's actually getting him out of the way . And that feels to me the same kind of concept where you're playing with expectations , and it was absolutely brilliant . And again , all of these are themes where it's a stunt or it's a piece of content that then generates media coverage , and I think that's why this Norwich City one works so well .
Speaker 1Anything that's got a twist that makes you think a little bit differently and taps into emotion , like that , anything that's emotional , is what really resonates to me , and that's why this campaign from Norwich City and the Samaritans is a great campaign , because you're watching it all the time and then there was a massive twist at the end and I just felt , yeah , it was well executed and low budget right Relatively low budget , I think so .
Speaker 3Also , the insight that the campaign was based around was a piece of data that revealed the average ticket holder for Norwich City is the same average age as men that are most at risk of taking their own life .
Speaker 2Oh interesting .
Speaker 3So , the whole campaign was kind of centered on that piece of insight and I think as well , they did a really good job of leveraging the platform of the football club and the whole football industry in a wider sense to reach more of a mass audience , but one that was so well aligned to their target demographic . I thought it was really simple but really smart . Another part of the campaign that they did was to partner up with all of the teams in the championship and they posted this creative on their social channels ahead of the match with Coventry I think it was , I think they do . I mean not the biggest football fan , but I think they post lineups ahead of their games who's going to play , whatever .
Speaker 1One hour before . Yeah .
Speaker 3Yeah , so in this instance they actually replaced it with sort of family names , so mum , sister , brother , father . So I thought that was quite hard hitting and they also which I thought was a nice touch all of the club sponsors gave up their positions on the kit to make way for the Samaritans branding for that game only .
Speaker 2So yeah , it was a really nice kind of joined up campaign , so a really clever kind of authentic amplification strategy surrounding that . That can go some way to explain why so many million people watched it .
Speaker 1Definitely watch it if you haven't seen it .
Speaker 2What's your view to ? To me , this feels very purpose driven . What's your view around that and around you know , are you seeing this in lots of other campaigns at the moment , this idea of kind of brand purpose ?
Speaker 3Yeah , I think its main objective , from what I can see online is to was to raise awareness , but equally , as a side effect , it really drove engagement . So a lot of people were engaging with the campaign but also opening up about their own stories . So there were loads of comments left on the social pages , even on the coverage people were talking about . It went viral on LinkedIn , people within the industry talking about it but also people sort of saying you know , wow , you know , I lost someone close to me a few years ago .
Speaker 3You know , people were opening up about their own experiences and I think people wouldn't do that if they didn't think it was authentic .
Speaker 1No , it was yeah it felt very authentic for people who've been affected by suicide . Yeah , it was , yeah , shocking , but good and authentic and well executed .
Speaker 2And that insight you mentioned actually makes a lot of sense , and I think it's so important to anchor campaigns and insight . It makes them much more robust , yeah , doesn't it ? Otherwise , it's just a good idea not anchored in anything , so that's encouraging that they did have that insight .
Emily's F*ck Up
Speaker 1Okay , and every guest that we get on the show , emily , we always ask what's your biggest fuck up and why , and I've got the fear now that it's probably going to be something that incriminates prohibition . But what's ?
Speaker 3yours . You might actually remember this quite well , but we were running some paid advertising . It was doing really well . I was really proud of it , monitoring it all the time . Went home , came in the next day , had an email from the client Can you just check the spend and the budget on this campaign ? So I went in thought , yeah , everything will be fine . No , it was not fine . I'd actually not set the campaign end date and the campaign was just spending , spending , spending , spending . If I remember , rightly .
Speaker 1it wasn't just that , it was the fact that instead of setting a daily limit no , sorry , instead of setting a lifetime limit , you'd set the daily limit to the lifetime limit . So if you say the campaign was £500 for the lifetime of the campaign , you'd set it per day .
Speaker 3Oh yeah , it was really spending . It was really spending . Luckily , though , I managed to dodge the bullet , because they came back and said this is the best result we've ever had on paid social .
Speaker 2So I managed to turn that right around and thankfully this was in the golden days of meta , wasn't it when things actually worked ?
Speaker 1For iOS 7.0 or iOS 7.1 , whichever one it was where they removed cookies .
Speaker 2yeah , yeah , good , very good , I remember that Good fuck up .
Speaker 1Thank you , I'll keep them coming . We offered to pay for it . But the client offered to . We offered to pay for it , didn't we Like it was an armist day .
Speaker 3Oh yeah , no , they were like brilliant .
Speaker 1The client said yeah , which is very nice of them .
Speaker 3Anyway .
Speaker 1Thank you for coming on . Yeah , thanks for coming on . Thank you , bye .
Speaker 3APPLAUSE .
