How To Turn Your Worst Projects Into Your Best Products

Ever get handed one of those projects that nobody cares about? Something under the radar that just needs to get done? What do you do? Grumble and just crank something out or rise to the challenge and create something spectacular? In my experience, these kinds of projects are ripe for doing great work. In fact, my most award-winning campaign ever (for both creativity and effectiveness) was one of these projects.

Sometimes the problem with high-profile projects is the layers of approval and all the chefs in the kitchen. I'm not saying you can't do spectacular work on high profile projects. You absolutely can. It's just harder. The beauty of a project that nobody cares about is that you have the opportunity to do something out of the box. People won't try and second guess creativity on a project like that – they are surprised to see it and much more likely to accept it.

That was the case with my most award-winning project. It was a postcard size insert in Advo mailers for a drug store client of ours. The strategy was sound. Boost traffic at under-performing stores by creating a loss-leader coupon (half-gallon of milk for 66-cents, two 2-liter Cokes for a dollar, etc) and inserting in in the Advo mailer in the zip codes around the store. Sounds boring right?

Even thought the strategy was sound and the coupons were incredible values, it wasn't performing. So the assignment was basically, do something to stop people from throwing this away without even looking at it. Do whatever you want; if you can work the logo and the product in, that's great. So, instead of looking at it as a crappy mail coupon insert job, my art director partner and I looked at it as a "go crazy and do something creative" opportunity.

What we ended up doing was a series of single panel cartoons with a "Far Side" type sense of humor. For the milk coupon, if it was a 24-hour store, we showed a cow sneaking out in trench coat disguise to pick up milk so she didn't have to be milked. For the Coke coupon we showed aliens raiding a man's picnic for Cokes and him hoping he had enough to appease them. We found a good illustrator and this just do something assignment became one of the most successful we'd ever done. Not only was the creative good, but the response rates were incredible. In fact we repeating the campaign later for another drug store chain we represented. (to see each postcard bigger, just click on the image)

So, next time you get an assignment nobody seems to care about, look at it as an opportunity to really wow someone. Look at is as an exciting challenge instead of dreaded drudgery. Who knows, you might do something truly out of this world!

Has this happened to you? I'd love to hear some of your hidden opportunity success stories.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & social media guy