HI THERE
Firstly, thank you so much for connecting with us, Chris and Emily.
We can’t wait to meet you tomorrow and find out
more about your mission at The Gym Group.
It would be fantastic if you could watch the films on this site before we meet.
We’d love to talk you through these case studies on our call.
With thanks from The Generals!
Our elevator pitch is that we are “a creative company for people on a mission”. This is a simple but very deliberate statement of intent, made up of three distinct elements:
WE ARE A CREATIVE COMPANY... While we excel at advertising, we have set this company up to deliver a broader definition of creativity. If you get closer to the problem, the solution will reveal itself.
FOR PEOPLE... This may sound obvious, but in our technology-driven world it is all too easy to forget that people are still people, with human needs and desires. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. Insight is still key.
ON A MISSION... We are all about behavioural change. We want people to do things, not just feel things, as a result of our work. We get out of bed to make a difference.
RECLAIMING
LEADERSHIP
Sekonda has established itself as a household name since launching in the 1960’s.
But as the brand has grown older, it had the challenge of maintaining current consumers and bringing a younger audience into the brand. The watch market has become increasingly complicated, and whether it’s too much choice or
too many functions, consumers have found themselves overwhelmed.
To cut through the clutter, they needed to stand for something that others didn’t.
So, we developed a campaign that rallied against the classic troupes of watch advertising - airbrushed actresses, race car drivers and astronauts wearing their watches in space, and positioned Sekonda as a brand that has
‘No Time For Nonsense’.
It is a punchy statement that uses the beautiful simplicity of their products as a strength. Most importantly, their unique and provocative point of view on the category helps them punch above their weight.
The launch campaign includes two 30 second TV spots featuring voice over by famed comedian Reginald D Hunter.
And the contextual print goes up against its rivals in real time with clever media placements.
It’s early days for the campaign yet but interim results suggest the brand is well
on its way to taking back ownership of the low-cost watch category they created.
STANDING OUT IN A COMMODITISED CATEGORY
When we won Yorkshire Tea in 2017 they were number three in the market
behind the traditional tea titans - PG Tips and Tetley.
Standard black tea is basically a commodity. People feel the actual product is largely the same and just keep buying the one they grew up with on autopilot.
So we knew that banging on about the details of Yorkshire’s product – how they source the leaves and how many cups they taste a day – wouldn’t win shoppers over.
Instead, we decided to celebrate their unique corporate culture. Because when we visited the Yorkshire Tea HQ, we discovered a huge sign on the wall that said
‘WE DO THINGS PROPER’. And we discovered that really was true.
The culture of Yorkshire Tea was all about doing every job brilliantly.
We brought this idea to life in TV by ‘recruiting’ some famous Yorkshire folk at the HQ into menial tasks; Parky did the interviews, the Kaiser Chiefs played the hold music,
and Sean Bean gave rousing induction speeches.
This idea has worked brilliantly in everything from TV to NPD launches, sponsorship, sustainability comms, sub-brand promotions and reactive social activity.
It’s been a proper 5 years of fun.
The results are proper good too: immediately after 'Where Everything’s Done Proper’ went live, Yorkshire Tea sales began to rise, and they have continued to do so. Yorkshire Tea overtook PG Tips to become Britain’s favourite brew in 2019,
and has gone on to become by far the market leader.
MAKING THE WORLD
SMILE AT CHRISTMAS
In 2017, Amazon asked us to create their first global holiday campaign.
As with most retailers, Christmas is Amazon’s most commercially important season. 40% of their total annual sales are made in December. It is a fiercely competitive and emotionally-charged time, when Amazon’s scale, speed and ease can actually be counter-productive in fuelling a wholly functional brand perception.
To make an impact, we knew we needed to get consumers
to see a brand role beyond the rational.
But the idea also had to work extremely hard across channels, occasion and markets. It needed to span a broad range of commercial objectives including sales events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday and many different touch points from TV,
their website and app, social channels, print, and digital.
So we leveraged a simple and universal insight: during the holidays, Amazon doesn’t just deliver cardboard packages, it delivers smiles. We made Amazon’s iconic packages the hero of the campaign - it was an inherently well branded idea rooted in one of their most iconic assets - their logo. We animated the logo on the box (which had previously been portrayed as an arrow from A-Z) so that it became a human smile, and brought those smiles to life, singing feel-good songs that perfectly captured the sentiment of the season.
The singing boxes took the Christmas season by storm for three years in a row: in 2017 (above) the boxes brought the joy of giving to life, in 2018 the campaign focussed on enjoyment of the whole holiday season and in 2019 (below) we moved on to talk about the feelings of togetherness the holidays bring.
Finally, here are some examples of the thousands of
hard-working assets the idea was used to create.
THANK YOU.
WE SALUTE YOU.