Promoting the Privatisation of British Telecom

James Hudson

A unique advertising problem: the one-off promotion of the flotation of British Telecom in 1984. Previous corporate campaign in the press described, designed to 'show the true face' of BT and counter anti-privatisation advertising.
Agency: DFS DorlandAuthor: James Hudson

Promoting the Privatisation of British Telecom

INTRODUCTION

This is a case history about the advertising of a product which had no price, was not on sale, which could not be recommended and which could not even be mentioned in TV advertising. Worse, there was no precedent for such a campaign and, unlike any other advertising campaign, it had only one chance to succeed. Failure could not even be contemplated.

Advertising the flotation of British Telecom was a unique problem.

BACKGROUND

In October 1979 Sir Keith Joseph pledged the government to the policy...

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