The Evening Standard has recently run ads apologising for past poor performance in meeting readers expectations. The Guardian reports: The market research evidently discovered that Londoners considered the paper to be too negative, not celebratory enough and guilty of failing to cater for the capital’s needs. A great city with great facilities was being persistently talked down.

It certainly is a bold campaign that will gain a lot of attention. It will also no doubt set up future expectations for readers and place the paper in a demanding position for change.

In line with our Civil Branding ideas, we always recommend beginning any new positioning with an authentic promise: one that customers will accept and one that the company can deliver. We often see the need for brands to wipe the slate clean, especially in developing markets where branding has previously been unsophisticated or in industries where there are very low customer expectations like finance.

Over the last decade, internet advertising has cut conventional media budgets, putting pressure on quality news items that come from investigative reporting and the like. The resulting drop in quality has refocused the industry on sensational news items that are easier to report on but created long-term damage to the brands.

This ad is a bold way of wiping the slate clean. The reason it is bold is because it is unusually humble, and we look forward to seeing how well people respond to this from the Civil Branding perspective.