I’d worked with Missing People some years before, with an idea that was the charity’s first ever brand partnership. Now the charity came to me with a problem. There had been zero media interest in how funds were being invested to train rescue dogs to find missing people with dementia. Furthermore, the charity didn’t have any budget to do a creative campaign.

Being told that a person’s scent could be captured and stored by the charity gave me an idea. Inspired by the increasing absurdity of celebrity fragrances (even Gemma got in on the act) with pretentious names, Real Housewives of Cheshire star Tanya Bardsley agreed to waive her fee to prank the public announce her new scent called ‘Chien’. She modelled for luxe promo images seeded to her 800,000 Instagram followers. Her fans replied buy pointing out that Chien is, of course, French for ‘dog’. Oh, Tanya!

The ‘drop and catch’ approach enabled us to generate tabloid headlines before Tanya revealed that her scent was to raise awareness of Missing People’s rescue dog and scent bank initiative –creating a second wave of coverage, including as spokesperson for the charity on Sky News.

Chien was nominated for the PR Week Award for Best Use of a Celebrity.