I Made the Worst Ad in British History
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What is the Big Cheese Dipper campaign and why is it called the worst ad in British history?
This is Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the show that teaches you growth from failure. I'm Chris Norton and every week a senior marketeur sits down with me and my colleague Will Ockenden and tells us what went wrong, what it cost them and what they would do differently. This is one of those moments, so enjoy. When we spoke last time, so we s 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. Um so what were the five picks and what were the three turkeys?
I can't remember. Um I can remember the turkey. Okay. By the way. Ironically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny with Turkey of the Week, 'cause 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 criticises Turkey of the Week and has a pop at it, but it gets four times as much traffic.
A friend of mine from uni set up Pot Bitch in at a site and um yeah you'd imagine a graduate from Oxford University, what does she do? Set up Pot Bitch. Why? 'Cause 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 so yeah, sorry. This is gonna sound to anyone listening like I'm trying to put off mentioning turkeys of the week. So can I mean look you can imagine what I got pick of a week for? 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.
How did the brief and client expectations set the stage for a disastrous TV spot?
Um I think I got a pick of the week for Old Lions when when uh Rich Denny and and and um Dave Henderson and I did that for Carlsberg. Uh Turkeys. Um
And what's the criteria for a turkey, by the way, before you go into the Turkeys? Is it just an editor? Their their criteria, yeah.
It's a random opinion of one journalist. Right. No. 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 the you know, fuck that. No one thinks like that. They just like stuff. You know, hence why The meer cat 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, p people love it. You know, it scores brilliantly. Just go and chat to Andrew or John at System One 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. The 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.
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 twenty years ago, I wrote across the top of the script in pencil and passed it back across to the account handler.
Why did the agency push a 60‑second TV ad instead of the 20‑second spots the client booked?
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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Big Cheese Dipper campaign and why is it called the worst ad in British history?
0:00–1:49
2
How did the brief and client expectations set the stage for a disastrous TV spot?
1:49–4:05
3
Why did the agency push a 60‑second TV ad instead of the 20‑second spots the client booked?
4:05–5:45
4
What creative decisions (rap battle, “big‑cheese” one‑upmanship) turned the spot into a turkey?
5:45–7:46
5
How did production budget, talent choices, and script flaws contribute to the ad’s failure?
7:46–9:53
6
What warning signs did the team miss and how could they have stopped the project early?
9:53–12:11
7
What key lessons does Kevin share for marketers to avoid similar catastrophic ads?
12:11–14:40
8
How can listeners apply these insights to improve their own campaign processes?
14:40–14:43
Speakers
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