Dr Mumbo

Winner of the gold shit stick medal

PeggyDr Mumbo is a big fan of Rob Campbell’s blog The Musings of an opinionated sod. Particularly when the Wieden + Kennedy strategy honcho has an axe to grind about something. Which is all of the time.

In Campbell’s latest post about scam ads (work created to please awards juries not actual consumers) the reader is given the sneaking suspicion that Asia’s favourite Birkenstocks-wearing Nottingham Forest fan may not be a huge fan of J. Walter Thompson’s intelligent clothes peg idea.

“To everyone behind Peggy, a huge congratulations,” Campbells writes in the post tagged with the key words Brand Suicide, Crap Campaigns In History, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History and Marketing Fail. 

“It gives me great, great pleasure to award you the gold shit stick medal for over-engineered, pointless, PR stunt rubbish, because – and you might not like to hear this – while Peggy might be the first intelligent peg, anyone who uses it is the most stupid and anyone who developed it, is the most desperate.”

Suggesting that Peggy might not be particularly useful in the real world outside of a judging room at the Palais des Festivals, Campbell wrote: “Just think of the time, effort and money that went into making this piece of madness when weather apps and simply USING YOUR EYES TO LOOK OUT THE WINDOW have served people well for years and years.”

For those of you who haven’t met Peggy yet, here she is:

His most upbeat assessment of the idea is arguably the description “a pile of embarrassing rubbish.”

JWT idea for soba allergiesJWT Japan’s curious idea to help foreigners find out if they have soba allergy via the medium of tattoos is given equally short thrift before Campbell declared: “I’m scared this sort of shit is just the beginning of what we’ll be seeing peddled by certain agency networks all over the place.”

With the Cannes deadline fast approaching, his fears are probably justified.

“Anything is easy when you don’t have anyone – or anything – to answer to… which makes the fact these scam ideas are so utterly rubbish, even worse,” Campbell notes in his post.

For his part, Dr Mumbo’s favourite idea of the awards season so far gets top marks for unashamed cynicism. Mumbai slum kids get free candy if they listen to sponsored English lessons delivered over a radio.

Seriously?

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