Fortune favours the scared.

In one of his recent agency blogs, Dave Trott describes how he would show Mike Greenlees, his Chief Exec at GGT, ideas for new campaigns.
On one occasion, they were pitching for a beer account.
Dave wrote a campaign and showed it to Mike.
Mike said, “it’'s a very good beer campaign, I’'ll have no trouble selling it. But it doesn’'t scare me. Can’'t you do something that scares me?”
At roughly the same time as this would have been happening, I was working on the Kimberly-Clark account at FSD.
It was the commercial and industrial washroom products part of Kimberly-Clark.
How exciting does that sound?
The truth is, it was the best account in the agency to work on.
It won shedloads of awards.
And it helped shift shedloads of paper tissues and towels.
The reason for this was not just very good creative work.
But a great client.
K-C knew how dull their products were.
And that they somehow needed to make them sound interesting.
So their Marketing Director at the time told the agency not to present any work to him that didn'’t immediately make him feel nervous.
In fact, his exact words were, “Don’t show me anything that doesn'’t scare the shit out of me.”
Pretty much what Mike said to Dave.
They all knew that, as Trotty says,  “Consumers aren’'t interested in the subtle differences between ad campaigns. If it isn’'t different, it won’'t stand out.
And if it doesn'’t stand out, it has no chance of working.”
Especially if the product, in itself, isn'’t that remarkable.
The only opportunity we had of making industrial toilet paper ads stand out was by coming up with ideas that made the client feel initially uncomfortable.
More than that – he actually wanted to feel scared of what he saw.
Because he knew that, if he felt apprehensive about running the work, the chances are, it would get noticed.
And he was right. It did.
The campaign was a massive success.
There are still a lot of dull products about. Probably more than ever.
If not dull, then samey.
If not samey, then at the very best, only subtly different from the competition.
And that goes for a lot of the advertising that’s used to promote them too.
Campaign after campaign that wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
Safe, comfortable, seen-it-before stuff that huddles together timidly, for protection.
You can smell the fear.
But it’'s a different kind of fear.
This is a fear of taking a chance.
Not the terror of being dull.