A Decade on From Campaign of the Decade: the lowdown on how it almost fell apart

This week marks the tenth anniversary of Missing Type, the biggest and most important campaign I worked on in my career. In 2019, it was voted Campaign of the Decade by the readers of PR Week (read to the end for full disclosure on that).

Everything in retrospect, in the afterglow of success, always appears seamless. Hundreds of household name brands (Google, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Nando's, Tesco, Arsenal FC, Spotify) and businesses came on board. It reversed 10 year decline in blood registrations with a 800% YOY increase. The awards! Yet, this campaign - which was activated from scratch in six weeks - nearly came apart at the seams and I was very ready to fall on my sword days prior to launch.

It started with an idea from two WCRS-ENGINE creatives Tom Dixon and Jo Griffin, who presented a treatment to me and fellow creative lead Jules Chalkley. 'A man emerges from the underground at Oxford Circus into a dystopian world...' where the letters of the blood groups A, O and B had disappeared from street signs, shop fronts, posters into Bond St and beyond.

The problem was we needed a PR campaign to start a millennial movement, not an ad. Nor did we have the budget for it. And we only had six weeks. Furthermore, trying to replicate the treatment concept, as the kids say, IRL would've involved dozens and dozens of people in cherry pickers dismantling signage in the middle of the night at great time and expense - and we'd need months of permissions and...no, it doesn't even bear thinking about. Non-starter.

Working with the team at NHSBT and MHP-ENGINE, I had to create the architecture and narrative of a campaign, with intrigue around why the letters A, O and B were disappearing 'everywhere', or at least the suggestion that they were.

In the days when Twitter was Twitter, and still a benign platform to rapidly drive awareness, participation, share and recruitment, the first decision was to pivot to social, maximising the reach and kudos of high-profile, influential brands. Meanwhile we needed at least four or five to visibly lose the letters from their signage in the real world as a launch platform.

Simple idea, great cause, major national issue, brands coming together, collaborating with the NHS to save and improve lives. This is easy, right? Guess what happened:

1. Every famous brand we approached - and we approached nearly a hundred- said NO.

   We called contacts. We cold called. The response was the same. "We won't be the only brand?...You have also approached our main competitor?...We have our nominated cause campaign and its not blood donation...You seriously want us to deface our logo? We've never done that and never will...Sorry, it's a no, but good luck".

   
   

2. Only TWO brands agreed to remove letters from a physical space - ODEON Leicester Square and Waterstones, Charing Cross Road - and they were both clients of MHP-ENGINE

   Something is better than nothing, right, but there were also just a handful of very minor brands had agreed to drop it on their social channels. This campaign required volume and reach for impact. A week before launch and we could already hear the sound of crickets in the distance. However, I was excited about the ODEON Leicester Square dimming the Os from its giant logo on the tower at its flagship location. Iconic, right.

   

   
   
   
   

3. Ah, Odeon. From an iconic tower to a coffee concession

   We needed visual content to put out at launch. But we had just two brand locations. Working with photographer Digby Oldridge, we'd captured Waterstones, so we moved on to Odeon Leicester Square at 5pm. Just one problem. We needed a shot of the lights and it was fucking June. Like a pair of idiots, it suddenly dawned on us that it wouldn't get dark until close to 10pm. So, we killed five hours in a Weatherspoons, emerging every so often to check the tower. Yet, there was still no sign of the Os on the tower being turned off. In panic, I called the manager at home who assured me they had been turned off. 'I can see them. They are still bloody on!'.

   'Oh, are you looking at the tower? No, we can't turn those off. If you go the other side of the cinema there's some ODEON lights above the Costa Coffee concession. Those are the ones we turned off'. They were no more than 60cm tall. It looked pathetic and I very nearly had a seizure. In desperation - and after a few lagers - Digby and I had to grab confused members of the public to pose with me (there I am, second from right) with Digby shooting upwards from a crouching position to create a sense of scale, disbelief. awe and intrigue. As if.

   

   
   

4. We desperately needed a third, ideally iconic location for launch. For once, Downing Street delivered.

   I'd already written the line in the press release 'The letters A, O and B are disappearing from signs everywhere' in the press release. That was hardly the case with just two paltry shots to back that up. Two is a party, but three is a crowd. For the full six weeks I'd been badgering Andi Ttofa, Head of Comms at NHSBT and Annie Gallimore at ENGINE to secure Downing St. The money shot. For five weeks they received a 'Hmm, its not a no,' in reply to their overtures. Then, days before launch, Alex Aiken, head of comms at The Cabinet Office, messaged to say we had a 30 minute slot to shoot in Downing St. (Here's me and colleague Helen Byard wasting valuable time to get a shot of ourselves, which was apparently completely breaking all protocol).

   

   
   

5. The Daily Mirror and Campaign also saved the day

   Gemma Sawyer (nee Irvine) was the project lead and together with Helen Byard they negotiated with The Daily Mirror to be a media partner for launch day. The editor Lloyd Embley also agreed to change the masthead for the first time in the paper's history. Crucially, Campaign magazine also came on board. Not only did it change its masthead, it also explained to brands the issue, the campaign and how they could participate on social.

   

6. From NO, NO to FOMO

   With the pictures of Downing Street, the Daily Mirror and the editorial from Campaign - plus the media relations launch with case studies and spokespeople talking about the desperate for donors blanketed on the Monday morning news - brands suddenly started sharing their defaced logos on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. As momentum and awareness gathered, so did a movement. After Arsenal posted, Spurs followed suit. My contact at McDonald's who'd politely said 'We could never do this' called back. 'It would normally take six months to get this approved, but give us 48 hours. It has to be signed off by the CEO in America, but we'll make it happen'.

   

And finally, how did Missing Type get voted Campaign of the Decade?

Look, I'm a creative, but my roots are as a publicist. When PR Week selected Missing Type in its shortlist at the end of 2019 for the COTD, I was thrilled and monitored the public vote. However, with 24 hours to go in a week long poll, it was lagging second by a couple of hundred votes to a campaign by Tourism Australia (or was it Iceland?). You either sit and watch events happen or you do something about it to influence the outcome. So, I contacted Melissa Thermidor who ran the socials at NHSBT, with hugely impressive follower numbers and engagement. 'We have a situation and an opportunity. I was wondering...is there any chance you can share this poll with your community?'.