Mar 13 2011 March 13, 2011 March 13, 2011 20Comments by ben

Yet another entrepreneur

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Before we get into today’s greedy bastard, I thought I might explain why I keep putting up these stories of non-advertising cash generation.

1. I really admire people who get off their arses and do something. It’s really easy to sit around moaning about crap briefs, tight budgets, clinically insane CDs etc., but it’s much harder to come up with an idea and spend the time and money executing it.

2. Having said that, it’s immensely satisfying being your own boss, and I hope some of these stories might make you think that your own crackpot, fuckwitted scheme is worthy of pursuit. Why not give it a go? You have nothing to lose but your dignity and savings.

3. They save me having to come up with a blog post.

So, without further ado, here’s Rob Webster of Leo Burnett to explain his Anarchy vs Monarchy revolutionary movement/excuse to sell T-shirts:

One day last month, during an excruciatingly dull bus journey, my thoughts turned to the royal wedding, or more specifically how I could cash in on it.

A couple of hours later I hit on the anarchy v. monarchy idea.  I thought I might be able use the concept to exploit a divided nation, like Marmite, or Katie Price and Peter Andre.

My mate Graham came on board and designed the spiffy t-shirts and website with the help of some talented guys at Beta. Without them we’d have been way too late to hook into the whole royal wedding hoopla.

Ordering the t-shirts was a farce of Del Boy proportions.  As a Northerner I found myself instinctively drawn to the rock bottom prices of an outfit I found on the internet.  £1500 quid and two weeks later I was sent four boxes of shirts.

Every one was the exact opposite of what we’d ordered and approved.
Thanks to the continued efforts of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to fuck one another up the arse (and some very shoddy IT protocol at the Mickey Mouse Shirt Emporium) our Macs inverted their jpeg, so we ended up basically approving a negative.

Despite, or because of our threat (bluff) to get legal on their ass they refused to accept responsibility.  We ended up agreeing to disagree and had to order a whole new run, but this time at cost price.  You pay peanuts….

The quality and print of the final t’s was excellent, so hopefully they should sell well, it’s just a shame it took us so long to get there.

The whole venture has probably cost us around 2.5k. After the early fuck up I’ll be grateful if we get this back, but I’m hoping for plenty of hits on the site. I still think it’s a strong digital concept (thanks to all at Leo’s and Beta for your social media help) so if all else fails, it’s something for the book.

As to whether or not we’ll do anything else with the concept, I think it’s probably got a limited shelf-life post wedding.  Although there’s always Prince Andrew…

Good to see how Rob managed to enrol other people into his scheme to make it happen. That’s not easy, so well done to him and good luck with the T-shirts.

And an update on previous Monday business plugs:

Dan Hubert’s iLazer app has got tonnes of coverage on the net , leading to iTunes putting it at No1 in the entertainment “What’s Hot List”. Nice one.

And Matt Janes’ doingsomething.co.uk site has now been featured in Creative Review. To celebrate, he’d like to offer you (yes, you) three free months on his site. Just use the promotional code ‘Christmas’.