Mike Stopforth

On 12 November 2006 I published a post on this blog and later repurposed it for Biz-Community commenting on how I thought Stork had missed the point completely with their “blogging housewife” 30 second spot for TV.  After my Biz-Community article went live I got a call from Unilever’s agency, McCann’s, to set up a meeting and explore the possibility of acting on what I had suggested.  I was pretty chuffed they’d listened, put my ideas to the agency who subsequently presented to Unilver.

Unilever’s answer? Loosely quoted, “we’re not sure blogging will translate to business”.

This after spending who knows how much on producing the blogging ad and flighting it hundreds of times.  Crikey.

Anyhow, I let it rest on the understanding that they were probably not going to shift, and besides, I had gotten pretty busy on some other accounts.

I use the Stork ‘Half-baked’ attempt at piggy-backing the social media trend as a classic ‘how not to’ in my presentations, but can’t anymore - it seems they’ve come around.

Longtail have developed foodcrEATions for them - “an interactive kitchen to share ideas, inspirations and tips about cooking, crafts and life”. It’s a good looking site in the early stages of adoption but it has super potential - congrats to Japie and team.