our first campaign for UKTV: 24 Hours to Go Broke
Earlier this year we announced that we've been appointed to UKTV's roster of agencies, and as we're in the business of telly (not to mention that we watch rather a lot of it for fun work), we were pretty excited to get cracking. On Monday night, our first campaign for the digital TV network launched, promoting the new Dave series 24 Hours to Go Broke.
In the show, celebs including some of the country's favourite funnymen (well, that's what they call themselves), TV personalities (any daytime TV fans out there?) and sportsmen (pub quiz boffins may recognise 'em), are paired up and sent off to a faraway land with a suitcase full of cash to spend. Think comic David Baddiel, who was named 'the world's Sixth Sexiest Jew', 'proud metrosexual' cricket chap Phil Tufnell and Countdown's 'queen of numbers' Rachel Riley. But there's a catch – they can't own anything at the end of it, their dough can only be spent on experiences. Surprisingly difficult, it turns out!
[from episode 1 – Baddiel and Herring in Armenia]
For our campaign we reached beyond telly to the world of all things social. Echoing the concept of the show, we hatched a plan to spend a suitcase full of marketing budget cash and pay the public to promote the show. Leading up to the show's premiere, we traded cash for a variety of weird and wonderful promotional activities including:
making a t-shirt for a rat
getting a "reverse" busker to pay his audience to listen
changing the name of a fish n' chip shop
sponsoring the UK's worst football team
and getting a farmer to paint a living neon ad on his cows.
In a first for us as an agency, we also paid the good men of Shoreditch for their facial hair, which we then turned it into an ad. That's right. An ad made of beard.
Fans followed the activity on Dave's social channels (@Join_Dave) and could even participate in the activity via Twitter – we asked the budding admen of the public to take their best shot at advertising and create their own DIY ad. The entries were judged by Maureen, Dave's tea lady, and money awarded on the basis of how much each submission tickled her fancy. Harsh critic, that Maureen, but we think you'll agree she's pretty generous. Here are some of her favourites:
[by @PaulShinnDraws]
[by @Pippa_d1]
[by @kkarabates]
All round, we had a lot of fun working with UKTV on this madcap campaign, and we think it went pretty well based solely on the enthusiastic number of DIY ads we received. Thanks to everyone involved for their time and effort (live editing footage of men shaving their beards off into a bucket takes a strong disposition).
Look out for our next UKTV campaign soon. We can't wait.