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.
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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.
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Kevin Chesters reveals the painful truth behind what he calls the worst advert ever made in British history. This is a forensic breakdown of ego, bad process and the lessons every marketer needs to hear.
Back in episode 102 of Embracing Marketing Mistakes, Kevin walks us through the infamous Big Cheese Dipper campaign. From ignoring clear strategic signals to forcing a flawed creative idea onto TV, this is a masterclass in how good teams end up making terrible work.
If you’ve ever wondered how to stop bad advertising before it happens, this conversation is essential listening.
When we spoke last time, so we we spoke a few weeks ago, you told me that you were proud that you'd had five picks of the week and three turkeys of the week with your ads. Yeah. So what were the five picks and what were the three turkeys? I can't remember.
Kevin Chesters
Um I can remember the turkeys. Ironically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny with Turkey of the Week, because everyone criticizes it. And I remember asking um I think it was Kate McGee when she was editor of campaign. I think it was Kate. I don't think it was Maisie. I think it was Kate told me this. Was that everyone criticizes Turkey of the Week and has a pop at it, but it gets four times as much traffic on the site. Because everyone loves a bit of gossip, don't they? Everyone loves a bit of sort of, you know, Hello and Heat and a bit of sort of you know Love Island. Everyone likes the gossip and the chat. A friend of mine from uni set up Pop bitch, you know, the site. And um you'd imagine it wouldn't you? A graduate from Oxford University. What did she do? Set up Popbitch. Why? Because there's a lot of money in it. Right, there's a lot of money in chat and a lot of money in all that. So yeah, sorry. This is gonna sound to anyone listening like I'm trying to put off mentioning turkeys of the week. So I mean, look, you can imagine what I got pick of the week for. I think like the times change work that Mick and I did. Uh I think we got like one for a Boots Christmas thing we did, loads of stuff for Honda over the years. Um I think I got a pick of the week for Old Lions when uh Rich Denny and and and um Dave Henderson and I did that for Carlsberg. Uh turkeys.
a turkey, by the way, before you go into the turkeys? Is it just an advantage? My criteria or theirs. Their criteria, yeah.
Kevin Chesters
It's a random opinion of one journalist. Okay. And by the way, it might be a journalist who's never made an ad before in their entire lives. Certainly it was for the one I got for Vodafone. The first Martin Freeman ad that we did for Vodafone got given pick of the week by a journalist who I believe has never worked in an agency or a client. I don't know that for a fact, but I think it was. I seem to remember it at the time sticking in my head. But anyway, in that classic thing, I've sometimes, and I wrote this when I wrote Private View for Campaign years ago. What one has to separate is the in my brain is planner and punter. The planner in my head wants to overthink things and think that people give a shit about ads and really look at them and go, oh, I wonder what the proposition was behind that. Oh, I wonder what Schopenhauer and Daniel Kahneman would have made of that, you know, fuck that, no one thinks like that. They just like stuff. You know, hence why the Meerkat has lasted nearly two decades, despite the fact that I've never found it funny. You know, but who cares what I think, right? You know, people love it. You know, it scores brilliantly. Just go and chat to Andrew or John at System1 and work out what real people like, you know. So I think for Vodafone, the Martin Freeman work, you know, people loved it. It worked really well. Martin's an everyman. You know, the they told us they wanted an archetype of an everyman. We're going, okay. Well, just look at Martin Freeman's character, Tim, in The Office, you know, the kind of person who's just
like you. You know, anyway, so we got a Turkey a week for that, which was completely unjustified and bullshit. Um, there was one that we got was completely justified. Totally justified. In fact, when I was originally shown the script for it in the meeting 20 years ago, I wrote across the top of the script in pencil and passed it back across to the account handler. This has got Turkey of the Week written all over it. Okay. And unsurprisingly, sometimes it's shit to be right. But unsurprisingly, I think it might have been the worst ad ever made in British history. Okay? It's got my fingerprints all over it. I mean, I can't disassociate myself from it. I'm trying to think whether to mention it. You can find it on YouTube. Well, you can find the 20-second version of it on YouTube. Thankfully, no one's ever put the 60-second version of it up. But um, but yeah, that was a turkey. It was terrible. Um, for all sorts of reasons. That do you want to go into them? Absolutely, we want to go into it, yeah. Ask me anything. Look, I think one of the best things you can do from a behavioral science point of view, it's demonstrate vulnerability. But I think from a human perspective, I just think people like honest people.
Will Ockenden
Yeah. So come on, what brand was it for and what was the ad? And we'll we'll we'll we'll absolutely look it up after the show.
Kevin Chesters
Okay. Now look, all I can say to this, if anyone comes at me for it, okay, is I was involved in this. I'm guilty. Right? Could I have stopped it? No idea. Could I have said more? Yes, I could. Okay. It was for a product called the Big Cheese Dipper from The Laughing Cow.
Okay. Okay. Now, there are moments in processes where you can make single-telling gestures that would have stopped bad things happening. Okay. And you know the old analogy of boiling a frog. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So don't throw a frog into boiling water because it'll jump out. If you put a frog in water and boil it gently, it will, it will go, it will sit there and boil to death. So there were moments in this process where, and if you want me to over-intellectualize and overthink it, it always reminds me of that line from Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth says she is steeped so far in blood that to carry on, that to go over is, you know, you basically to carry on is less irksome than to go back. Okay? Too far in, basically. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we were given a brief for a new product called the Big Cheese Dipper with a Zed. Hey, come on, it was targeting kids. You can't blame me for that. Gen Z? And by the way, that wasn't my thing. Well, I didn't name it, okay? I'm gonna sit here basically making excuses for myself all the way through this. But we started off with me going, look, if you want to come up and from an industry perspective, give me a big giant punch in the face for being responsible for the worst ad in British history, I'm I'm culpable. Right. We got a brief, and uh it made sense as a product, and they'd got just distribution in two big supermarkets and whatever, right? Anyway, it taught me that over the years you should just be more honest. But anyway, we'll we'll come to that. So the brief came in and they had mentioned somewhere on the brief that that we could do
TV. So what did the agency see? You know that old Gary Larson cartoon of what you say to dogs and what dogs hear. So, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Rex, you know, when the you're saying to the dog, look, Rex, we've been out before, there's some foot. Well, anyway, he's just hearing his name. So all the agency saw when they saw this brief was telly. So the creative team, oh, I'm not gonna name, went off and wrote a tele ad. Which, of course, I mean, I'll tell you another story of this. I remember years ago, the same thing happened to me on a pitch for Ford, um, ten years before this, where the client had said, Yes, you can do TV as part of the mix, but it has to be direct response because we haven't got the money for it. When we got the first set of scripts back, um the opening line of the script was opens in a forest in Thailand. I'm like, cheap, fuck off, mate. Um, anyway, and then proceeded to be an ad where elephants did precision walking. I'm like, what anyway, so let's get back to the cheese dipper. I know I keep looking like I don't want to talk about this. The first thing we saw was a 60-second TV ad. Anyway, we had the first meeting with the client where the client said, we have booked 20-second spots. The media company gave us the media schedule. At this point, the entire idea depended upon the ad being quite long. Because remember, it's called the Big Cheese Dipper. So the creative strategic thought on it was that it's one upmanship. You think that's big, but this is big. You think that's big, but this is bigger. You think that's bigger, look at this. And then you end the argument with the big cheese dipper, which is the ultimate big cheese thing. Yeah? I didn't say it was genius, mate. I just said it worked, okay? So anyway, but it did work, right? At the time there were lots of sort of trends of kids wearing really big heels on trainers and really big jackets and the rest of it, right? I want to say back in the day, this is 2006.
I'm not talking about, you know, we're not talking about Goethe, you know, or alotoshgar Toshiba. I mean, like, this is like, you know, it is the modern world. Uh 2006. Anyway, at that point the ad should have stopped. Because it only worked with this one upmanship. But basically, the creative team had Lady Macbeth did, they'd got so into the idea of doing a telead. I think it might have been their first telead. They've done loads of work since. They're a lovely couple of lads, but in this instance, it was like, yeah, okay. We should have stopped it. It didn't work as a 20. We can make it work as a 20. And then as an agency, we did something terrible. I'm going to absolve all the clients of all blame here. We basically convinced them that it could work. Because I think it was what we wanted to do. Um, and it didn't work. I mean, it was pretty poor to start with, but it was kind of like the ad was a rap battle, right? It was like, you know, people doing like sort of and now this is quite a big thing, but you know, like almost like a roast, a rap battle. Two people in a tennis, in a basketball court. So you think that's big, this is bigger, you think that's big, this is bigger, you think that's big, this is bigger. Look, I've got a big cheese dipper. Oh fuck, I've lost the argument, I look like an idiot, and then you say big cheese dipper. Do you know what I mean? Again, I'm not claiming this is, you know, Lars Van Trier. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, we're not in Kubrick territory, it's an advert. You have to get over yourself sometimes and realise, you know, you're in the commercial application of creativity. I mean, I've often shut down overly arrogant creators in my time by pointing out that, you know, you're not an artist, mate, you're a commercial artist. You know, if you want to be an artist,
fuck off and paint and see if you can make a living out of it. You know what I mean? You probably won't be able to make a living out of it. Look, but I'm not saying the most stunningly, some of the most stunningly creatively, brilliantly creative people I've ever met in my life, like Mick, like Chris Groom, like Stu Hartness, you know, um Sam Heath, these people, right, are brilliantly, brilliantly creative, but they're smart enough to understand that what they do is the commercial application of creativity. Anyway, we're back to Cheese Dipper. We've got a script, it doesn't really work. Um, we saw the budget for production, it didn't really work either. You've got a bunch of sort of slightly older people who like are a bit middle class trying to write a rap battle. I mean, everything sort of conspired to make what I think is technically known as shit. Right? So it's awful. It really is awful. Look, if you want to go on YouTube, type in Big Cheese Dipper with a Zed rap battle, you'll see it. It doesn't really make any sense. It's a bit pony. Um, and I've done ads with ponies in, by the way, I'm sure you know for three, which were very good. But this was just pony, okay? Um, as I said to someone before, I made a fair bit of pony in my career before I was allowed to make pony. And um, and yeah, so it is the worst ad I think in British history, and for all sorts of reasons, it was a massive mistake to make it. I absolved the client from all blame who went on to have a good career. I don't think holds it against me. But if you find me dead in a ditch with a big bunch of cheese over the top of my head, um, with a diver's
flipper shoved in my mouth, which will make sense if you go and watch the ad, then you'll know that the client never forgave the agent.
Speaker
Can you top it? Michael Scotty Big Cheese Dipper Divers Flipper.
Will Ockenden
Introducing the Big Cheese Dipper. Big and Cheesy, it was you easy. What a confession. What a claim. I don't think we've ever had somebody confessing to the worst advert in the history of adverts before.
