The Whisper on Wispa: Never Underestimate the power of 1980's nostalgia

I have received a flurry of emails from fellow PR friends and journalists who have realised that Borkowski is behind the relaunch of Wispa.  Many erroneously think we created an online campaign to bring back Wispa.

We designed a press campaign informed by the amount of on line pressure groups that had been running for over two years, to twist Cadbury’s arm to bring back this favourite.  On the last count there were 360 individual campaigns across Bebo, My Space and Facebook as well as countless YouTube sites hosting the famous eighties Wispa commercials.

This organic desire, fuelled by nostalgia and empowered by a sense of fun, could not have been created by any PRs. Manipulation of the social networking sites by PRs cannot be achieved without being found out. We at Borkowski look for a journalistic hook in every story and although I have a reputation for being a stuntster, I prefer to deconstruct a brand to find out if a real story exists before a paradigm is created.  Luckily we won a piece of business, a famous heritage brand, which was ripe for return.

Making Cadbury confident that there was a ground swell of enthusiasm for Wispa was our overview when we had done an online audit.  Too many scamsters spend time trying to originate on line campaigns which have no resonance with an online community.  Unfortunately, foolish brands and their budgets are soon parted. Clearly Wispa was as story that had a hook that engaged the media.

If we did one thing for the brand, it was spotting the story and bringing it alive within a media community.  Manipulation of the web is very dangerous. Too many naïve PRs feel they can force public opinion by this method, but luckily they are usually found out.