PromaxBDA Europe 2018 SILVER WINNER
Best Integrated Marketing Campaign For A Programme
Campaign Marketing New Thinking Awards 2017 Shortlist
Creative Excellence Category
“The campaign is the task. The task is the campaign.”
The brief for this campaign was to make Taskmaster famous; to take an established and popular Dave show and open it up to a new, younger audience. Research had shown that when people understood the show format, by seeing a task from start to finish, they engaged with it. We also had to introduce the new contestants and leverage returning show-talent Greg Davies and Alex Horne. With that in mind we hit on the idea of making advertising the show one of the tasks – we’d simply set the new contestants the task of promoting the show themselves. Or to put it in the words of our pitch – “The campaign is the task. The task is the campaign.” Our marketing would demonstrate the format of the show, and its humour, in every piece of communication. We’d get a bespoke, advertising-related task to promote the new series, communicate the different personalities of the new contestants and end up with a disruptive, edgy and confident campaign that had real talkability and spoke in the irreverent voice of the series. Needless to say, the fact that we had absolutely no idea what we were going to get was the riskiest but also the most exciting aspect of this creative route.
In practice it meant reassembling the new contestants – Mel Giedroyc, Hugh Dennis, Joe Lycett, Lolly Adefope and Noel Fielding – plus Taskmaster admin assistant Alex Horne for two shoot days in the Round Chapel in Hackney, where we surprised them with the task. Each comedian was then given 30 minutes to create a life-size 48-sheet billboard from scratch under genuine task conditions. These billboards were housed within a Dave branded lock-up and distributed nationally. The task was also captured on eight cameras to provide a huge resource of AV material to create the promo campaign, an exclusive task video, social assets and other long form content.
The launch brought in 504k adults, consolidating at 860k; up +99% vs slot and +22% up on the launch of series 3, successfully moving from 10pm to the more competitive 9pm slot for the first time. It was the 2nd highest non-PSB programme of the day, earning a 2.66 share with a profile that was both very young – 39% 16-34 – and upmarket – 59% ABC1 and 30% ABC1 MEN.
Credits
Creative/Creative Manager – Paul Philpott
Assistant Brand Manager – Jessica Court @ UKTV
Senior Brand Manager – Cherie Cunningham @ UKTV
Senior Producer – Celia Bayne @ UKTV
Producer – Holly McIvor @ UKTV
Longform edit – Sarah Peczek @ The Farm
AV Design – Adam Cutts @ UKTV
Head Of Design – Peter Allinson @ UKTV
OOH Design – MMMultiply
