Martin Fucking Who?

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).

Mmm... Olympics!

I noticed a truly amazing thing while watching the Olympics on TV the other night.

It wasn’t the atmosphere in the stadium. It wasn’t the outstanding performances of Jessica, or Mo, or The Ginger Fella. It wasn’t even Gaby Logan’s Shoddy Cardboard Big Ben Gold Medal totalizer^®.

Gaby Logan’s Shoddy Cardboard Big Ben Gold Medal totalizer^®

No, it was something much more inconsequential; something you may not even have noticed at all. It was the colour purple.

The Cadburys Dairy Milk London 2012 Medal Givers.

Purple is everywhere: hanging from the rafters, adorning the many thousands of volunteers who keep everything moving, around the necks of medalists; it’s even the colour of the podium every athlete aims to end up standing on.

What’s wrong with purple I hear you ask? Nothing. I like purple. Purple is a perfectly nice colour. The trouble is that purple just so happens to be the main colour of one of the Games’ main sponsors.

A simple tweet about the podium making a Twitterer hanker after a bar of Dairy Milk was where it started. Quite a funny gag I thought, but the more I considered it, the more I wondered if there was indeed an ulterior motif behind the games’ branding beside it looking quite nice and feeling a bit regal.

The funny Tweet.

Ok, let’s ignore the fact that I find it immoral that a maker of fatty chocolate treats should be allowed anywhere near a festival celebrating the quest for physical perfection. That’s beside the point.

What I find hard to believe is that LOCOG would accidently allow the branding of a sponsor to match the branding of the Games. In my experience, it’s difficult enough to get a 50-word piece of copy through LOCOG - it’s like walking a minefield with elephantiasis of the ankles. So the decision to use the colour purple, or the decision to accept the purple brand as a sponsor (whichever came first), is frankly baffling.

Surely there were meetings in which sketches were shared? Then artist’s impressions, then material samples, print previews, dressing sessions, fittings and so on and so forth? Surely during one of these meetings, perhaps in which a bar, or bars, of chocolate might even have featured on the table, someone should have noticed the similarity of the purple in the stadium and the purple wrapping the chocolate?

Or is this all just a ridiculously implausible accident?

Forget Bradley Wiggins – the true winner of these games is Cadbury’s.

In my mind, the only way the Games could push its products any further would be if Curly Wurlys replaced the relay race batons.

Mmm… relay race batons.

It's about to kick off

After months of seeming inactivity, we are about to enter a month of mayhem; shooting more Churchill, a Sky Bet ad in Belgrade, and then more Churchill TV and print. All will appear here. I know, you could almost shit yourself with the excitement couldn't you?

Oh, Predictable Affirmative Gag!

We've finally put our Churchill TV on our Carbonmade site. Well, four of them anyway - there is another ad waiting an air date and a couple more in development, so it looks as if it's going to be an ongoing project for the foreseeable future.

This project took a long, long time - perhaps as long as a year, with things changing and evolving right up to the shoot. We're happy with how things turned out, which given some of the pitfalls along the way we never thought we'd be able to say.

The ads were shot by Dominic Brigstocke at Tomboy, and post was done by Glassworks, with Nick at Angel providing his magic on the sound. TV production at WCRS was done by the lovely Eileen and Lizzie.

We hope you like.

Happy New Year!

Here we both are on set with new, improved Churchill whose latest campaign (which we wrote) will be on your telly from tomorrow. There are five 30 second adverts in all and they should all be on air by the end of January. We'll post them here when we've got them all finished. 

Hopping, Skipping and Jumping on the Bandwagon

It's the Olympics next year, and let's face it - every marketing department wants a piece of it. You can't really blame them I suppose as it's going to be watched by billions worldwide, and any positive emotions it generates might just rub off on your product (even if your product is a fat-filled burger or a chocolate bar crammed full with a glass and a half of monosodium glutamate).

BMW are no different. They've spent a great deal on securing the prestigious position of Official Supporter of London 2012 (or something) and so they wanted everyone to know about it.

That's where we came in. We had to tie in an event which celebrates the amazing feats a supremely trained human body is capable of with a company who makes cars. Cars you sit on your arse to drive around in. Often just to the shops down the road. Added to this, every headline had to include the word 'Joy' which formed the basis of the current global campaign for BMW. Oh, and we had to have a car in every one too. 

You see the difficulty?

Anyway, we decided to concentrate on the similarities between the athletes and the technology/design behind each car, and as such across the whole range in general. We think we did this pretty well in the end.

You can see them by clicking on the folio to your right, or here.

The ads were shot by Rick Guest and the images will be dotted about the Olympic park if you are lucky enough to get a ticket to the big event next year.

We haven't got any. Just saying, like...

MINI POSTERS

We've done some posters for MINI Coupe too. They're based around the old action transfers you probably played with as a kid. You can see them here.