I’m one of those marketers who have to admit that Richard Staveley and his global marketing team at Protein World created a stonkingly good marketing campaign.

Did I take offense? Did I personally think it was in bad taste? Was I annoyed that yet again the fear of an ‘unbody beautiful’ was possibly creating a frenzy amongst the insecure? Yes, to all of that.

But if you pick the bones apart of the campaign itself, never mind the messaging and the product it supported, you’ve got to give the campaign gold stars for a job well done.

After all, he’s got 30,000+ new customers and £2M in incremental sales already as a result.

Element by element we can see that from the creative through to the execution, there were numerous bold decisions resulting in positioning the company in the path of a tornado of anti-advertising sentiment.

That got the conversation started.

And which marketer of us, doesn’t focus on and live for, getting conversations started with our stakeholders?

Only this one went one step further. Not only did the targeted segment ‘get it’, the non-targeted segment (London commuters for example) took great offense, unleashing a torrid backlash of response, and that fueled the campaign even further. Outraged consumers took the mantle further and protests culminated in protests in Hyde Park.

The Protein World team strategically decided not to apologise for the campaign, noting that ‘an extreme minority’ has made a lot of noise. It gave the team a platform to shout about their core message and they decided to be grateful for that opportunity-no matter how it came about.

In a last master stroke of what is probably uncanny luck, but likely in time to be seen as exceptional marketing strategy, other brands jumped on board with branded responses to the campaign, taking an alternative angle-think Carlsberg.

And what else could a marketer wish for?

Marketingmoves recruits only the best marketers. Only for Technolgy. For further information on disruptive and creative marketers that can make a difference to your business, contact Melvin Day at mday@marketingmoves.com or on +441932 253352

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