The aim was to help people understand what the 'TV revolution' actually meant. We had to ask all the questions and answer them there and then.
And we wanted to do the advertising in a way people hadn't seen before.
Enter the double act. The idiot who asks all the questions teamed up with the smart guy who had all the answers. Put them in front of the telly and - just because it seemed like a good idea at the time - make the smart guy a knitted monkey.
What followed was beyond everybody's wildest dreams. Millward Brown's tracking studies went off the scale, retail sales trends reversed overnight to outstrip Sky's by two to one.
Then came September 11. ITV's ad revenues tumbled and Sky hit back with a below-the-line drive that cut ITV Digital's lead in retail.
In the run-up to Christmas, the 'free monkey' promotion saw security guards in Dixons guarding the monkeys in the store windows rather than the TVs.
But with the market performance of Sky and ITV Digital neck and neck, the future for ITV Digital lay in the robustness of the market itself.
The City said no to ITV Digital, and that was that. As with all such gambles, the costs bore no relation to those anticipated. You'd need to think of a number, then treble it, to come close to the cost of making a go of digital.
Today, Sky is dominant, but realises there's a brand issue to be resolved.
People loved Monkey more than Sky and that hurt it.
Does the Bill Bernbach observation that "nothing kills a bad product quicker than great advertising
apply to ITV Digital's Al and Monkey?
Perhaps. It was our chance to take the battle to Sky, but in the longer term the limitations of the product would have become a problem.
And finally what about the little guy himself? Everybody wants to see him live on. And whoever is lucky enough to sign him, will win the hearts and minds of the British public for years to come.
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