A true story: the birth of a great campaign

Paul Feldwick

The then Executive Planning Director at BMP DDB Needham Worldwide tells the story of the Rowan Atkinson award-winning campaign for Barclaycard, and shows how, like most great campaigns, it developed largely through a mixture of 'muddle, error, guesswork and pure luck', as well as ego-free teamwork.

A True Story: The Birth of a Great Campaign

Paul FeldwickDDB London

Some 14 years ago, the agency I worked at – it laboured then under the unwieldy name of BMP DDB Needham Worldwide – was invited to pitch for the Barclaycard account.

Barclaycard was one of the two leading credit card brands in the UK. It had a history of famous advertising, which for the previous nine years had featured the television presenter Alan Whicker. One of the questions posed to agencies in the pitch was whether to keep Whicker, who was strongly associated with the brand, or...

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