Tideline came to us with a media plan and a deadline. The plan was a £4m national TV campaign about coastal flooding. The deadline was a board meeting in three weeks.
We wrote three pages. The first mapped the actual at-risk households — eighty-six thousand of them, all within four postcode districts. The second priced a geo-targeted alert system and a small AR pilot for the visitor centres in those districts. The third was a single paragraph recommending the board not approve the TV buy.
The board approved the alternative. Sign-ups to the alert system are up 318% on the prior scheme. Reach into the at-risk cohort is 94%. The remaining budget paid for two years of operations.
The point of the note was not the saving. The point was that the agency proposing the TV buy was also booking it. Independent advice changes which question the board is being asked. Sometimes the answer to that question is: don't spend the money.
