Things were going along nicely with Churchill - we were writing some funny little ads and the client was very, very happy.
Then Martin Clunes had to go and ruin it by losing his licence for speeding.
Weirdly, he seemed to think it was odd that Churchill shouldn't want to pay a man who couldn't drive to advertise a product that only people who can drive can use, but everyone else saw it differently. As this
great article from The Independent's Grace Dent brilliantly testifies.
The main problem was that we were due to shoot the next set of ads in the campaign around the time that the ban came to light, so we were thrown into a bit of a turmoil. We put out some 10 second offer ads to fill the gap, then got to work finding a replacement and re-writing the campaign to fit the new celebrity.
It was a bit of a fractious couple of months, but in the end we're pretty happy where we've got to.
We've used Dawn French who is really popular with the target market, and is also a really good on-screen fit with Churchill. She feels like she's been with him for ages. We have the launch ad for this campaign on our online folio page, so if you'd like to see it just click
here.
We shot another 4 ads, which will air over the next month or so. We'll post them up as they're finished.
They were once again shot by the brilliant Dominic Brigstocke, through Tomboy, and were excellently produced by Lizzie Mabbut at WCRS (despite the distinct lack of lunchtime post-production sessions).
