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PERSPECTIVE
You don't have to delve very far into the advertising process to understand quite how much advertisers worry about their advertising. But it's quite rare to find an advertiser who worries about their ads working too well. So there's a tangible irony in the news this week that Boots' advertising has simply been too damn effective.
Boots' recent ad campaign starring Jonny Wilkinson and inviting customers to pop in for a free cholesterol test has had a finger-wagging from Ofcom after the retailer was overwhelmed by the number of people wanting the test and failed to keep pace with demand.
Of course, you might think that super-effective advertising should happen more often than it does. After all, we live in an age when advertising is subjected to crippling amounts of pre-testing, endlessly focus-grouping the likely consumer reaction and all too often reducing great creative ideas...