Dave – Always On…

PromaxBDA Europe 2019 GOLD WINNER
Best Channel Key Art Campaign

The Drum 2018 OOH Awards GOLD WINNER
Best Use Of Long Copy

The Drum 2019 Design Awards HIGHLY COMMENDED
Writing for Design

PromaxBDA UK 2018 SILVER WINNER
Best OOH Campaign

PromaxBDA Europe 2018 SILVER WINNER
Best Channel Key Art/Poster Campaign

Our brief was to create an ongoing off-air presence for Dave, by creating a series of brand ads for UK travel environments.  The goal was to project the channel voice directly into our audience’s day, in a contextual, shareable and funny way, specifically targeting their commute.  The creative provoked a huge response online, generating hundreds of likes, shares and comments.

Launching its 2019 OOH competition, The Drum’s senior reporter John McCarthy featured the campaign in a retrospective of previous winners, specifically the ‘Emergency – Phone Battery’ creative: “When I hear that Dave is the Home of Witty Banter – I think: ‘Prove It’.  And so it did,” admits McCarthy.  “As a writer-man with an unyielding bias in support of long-copy ads (almost as if to prove that writing and reading isn’t dead), it was a treat to sit on the Tube drunkenly dissecting Dave’s ‘Always On’ copy about what to do when your mobile phone battery dies. Like an observational comedian on Dave, it shrugged ‘phones eh?’ before launching into a tirade about how to better pass the time.  The copywriter appears to have opted for text that is a bit smaller than is comfortably legible. I was drawn in, I leant forward in my seat and squinted at the musings. Twenty minutes after my copy chuckle, I threw myself into bed and absorbed some Dave.”

In September 2018, Campaign listed the work as one of its ‘Most Influential Out Of Home Campaigns Of 2018 So Far…’.  Rik Moore, Head Of Strategy at Havas Media said the campaign ‘creates a comedic-equivalent of the behaviours that made the classic Economist work so strong in outdoor.  The ads are genuinely funny….well-executed on every level.’

Credits
Writer/Creative/Creative Manager – Paul Philpott
Design Manager – Sophie Yeoman @ UKTV
Print Design – Veer Assi and Dani Liqueri @ UKTV
Additional Material – Hoot Comedy (‘Commuting Dos And Don’ts’), Will Gunton (‘Wordsearch’)