It might have been unprofessional but I’m glad my mistake made people laugh

It wasn’t supposed to go out as part of the campaign, it was just a little joke to herself and her colleague – but if it brought some people joy, Trudy Tyler was happy. By Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

I’m in trouble. The #Yne wellness Post-it campaign has been a huge success, in terms of the number of times the company hashtag has been used on social media. The problem is that the Post-it note social media users have shared most often is one that was never meant to be seen outside my kitchen. Somehow the bright pink note onto which I had scribbled “Blah, blah, blah. Some patronising crap about wellness”, while trying to work out the best pen to use for writing 300 aphorisms, made it back into the pile that George and I stuck on lampposts all over Clapham and Balham.

I was called to a Zoom summit with Bella my boss, who told me that she’d had to tell Saskia, #Yne’s founder and my biggest client, that Bella Vista PR would not be charging for the Post-it campaign after all. Even though technically my single errant note had been shared many more times than outlined in the “successful outcomes” table we’d prepared for the exercise.

“And the #Yne hashtag is on that Post-it,” I pointed out, during my virtual dressing-down. “Perhaps we need to suggest to Saskia that this is subversive advertising at its best. People are far more likely to remember my sarcastic note than any of the usual platitudes. They’ll still want to know what #Yne means.”