Organised chaos.
By The Team 09 Mar 2009.
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A little on the nose? At this time of year people won't mind.
Amazing how a brand we created 15 years ago is going stronger than ever.
Red Nose Day has come round again – the eleventh since 1985. You'll know if you've seen kids sporting evil red squidgy hooters. Millions of us will tune in on Friday 13 March to see how groups of otherwise sane folk from scout groups and supermarkets can write impossibly sized cardboard cheques for thousands for pounds.
Amazing how a brand we created 15 years ago is going stronger than ever – raising £420 million. Whether it’s supporting orphans in Africa who’ve lost their parents to AIDS, or helping older people in the UK who are abused by someone they should be able to trust – Comic Relief will use the money you raise to help people in desperate need. Comic Relief is an organic, chaotic, self-propelling success story. A feast of what Britain does best – humour, entangled with the ability to raise enormous sums of money. There is something pleasing about a project that doesn’t know how big it’s going to be until it has completely run away with itself.
Born from chaos.
As a young spadger, I was sat at a table discussing ideas with brilliant comedy writers, blissfully unaware of how far-reaching this work was going to be. But I did know that this excitable puppy was going to need house training. The result was an identity and a how-to guide for the Comic Relief brand, which we suitably published in the form of a comic book. How many brands can claim to have used a naked Liz Hurley to demonstrate the infringement of exclusion zones?
The luxury of being so far removed from something you’ve done, to the extent that you’ve almost forgotten you did it, is in being able to view it objectively. With Comic Relief, the retrospective view is a good one. It has grown and grown up into an institution – and spawned many offspring, all under the same mother brand. It’s still fresh and it works – 98% of the UK love it. Now there's a brand effectiveness stat to die for.
If you'd like to know more, please contact matthewfrost@theteam.co.ukChaos organised (in red round plastic).
Visit the Comic Relief and Red Nose Day ’09 websites:
