Irish creative agency The Public House is offering marketing directors the chance to breathe new life into ideas that never made it off the drawing board, in a Halloween initiative that proves even dead campaigns can have an afterlife.
Dubbed Idea de los Muertos, the initiative allows brands to rummage through the agency’s creative graveyard and resurrect previously rejected or abandoned ideas, free of charge.
According to The Public House, the creative industry’s graveyard is littered with the remains of perfectly good ideas that met an untimely end, often through no fault of their own. Some were murdered by budgets cuts, others fell victim to changing briefs, while a few may simply have encountered that most terrifying of creatures: the client approval committee.
Rather than allowing these unfortunate concepts to rest in peace, the agency has decided to bring them back from the dead with an offer of a second chance at life.
“It’s often the case that a great idea, for one reason or another, isn’t the one that gets made. These are ideas that hundreds of hours of top-level expertise have gone into – ideas that could still be massively effective for a different product, or market, or brand,” said Kerrie Sweeney, managing director of The Public House.
“That’s what Idea de los Muertos is all about – just because something is dead, doesn’t mean that it isn’t still extremely valuable.”
The agency says its collection of undead creativity includes ideas spanning behavioural change, awareness campaigns and cultural engagement, all awaiting a brave marketing director willing to resurrect them and give them another shot at the living.
And with marketing budgets under pressure and deadlines becoming increasingly frightening, the agency believes there is a compelling business case for a little creative necromancy.
“Not everyone has the time to raise a great idea from scratch,” said Rob Maguire, executive creative director at The Public House.
“For the busy modern Marketing Director, it can sometimes be more practical to raise an idea from the dead.”
Would-be creative grave robbers can dig HERE, browse the available ideas and select the ones they would like to summon back into the world of the living.
The Public House has reassured interested parties that no blood sacrifice is required, although it concedes that one would probably be appreciated by whichever pagan deity happens to be overseeing the proceedings.
The offer is available for a strictly limited period, with the agency warning that the portal between the living and the dead is expected to close next Monday. Probably.
For marketing directors haunted by looming deadlines, shrinking budgets and the ghosts of campaigns past, it might just be an offer to die for.
And unlike most agency pitches, there’s no need to start with a blank sheet of paper. Just a shovel.
