Simply Cool

I was flicking through my newsfeed earlier today and stopped at this story: ITV to switch off its seven channels for an hour for Olympic Event. At first it reminded me of those classic ITV gaffs from their football coverage (remember when they switched to the ads too early and missed Steven Gerrard’s goal in the World Cup 2010) - I immediately imagined some server maintenance scheduling screw up meaning we are going miss the omnibus of Emmerdale. This, however, is something they've got right on many levels.

On closer examination it is a clever idea to support the I Am Team GB campaign. ITV will switch off all seven channels for one hour and, according to reports, leave a simple message on screen saying: “We’ve gone running – why don’t you join us”.

That’s pretty cool – both as an idea and a story.

What is cool about it is that a simple idea to create some publicity has driven me to take action and find out more about a campaign I’d not heard about before. I clicked on the link, spent a few minutes checking out the impressive campaign, looking on the ITV website to see if they had a press release up about their hour-long shut down (they didn’t at time of writing) and have signed up to the campaign.

I can’t imagine the number of people who needed to sign off on the idea to turn off seven TV channels for an hour. Kudos to the PR person who managed to convince everyone to go for the idea. In reality, the viewing figures for 09:30 on a Saturday morning are probably pretty low (after all does anyone actually watch Murder She Wrote?) – but I can imagine that in an organisation of that size there would be plenty of people who needed to be convinced to support the ‘switch off’.

What it reinforces to me is that organisations need to be brave when deciding to support an initiative. ITV are a sponsor of the I Am Team GB campaign and they could just have done the easy things to support the initiative (donation, ITN news coverage, website content etc). I am sure they have done those things - in fact there is a Dualathlon going on in Emmerdale apparently - but also they took a risk and did somehting bold. In doing so they really stand out as a campaign partner not just supporter and help boost the profile of the campaign.

The other thing I find cool is the simplicity of the message they will communicate on 27th August. I love that when you turn on ITV 1 that Saturday morning you will be greerted by “we’ve gone running – why don’t you join us”. The screen won’t be filled with back slapping messages of pride at supporting such a worthwhile initiative or self-promotion blurb. Instead we will see a simple message that will grab our attention and make us want to find out more.

The world of healthcare is complex but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to keep the message simple and make bold decisions to get our message to stand out.