The brief for the new Channel 4 Brand idents was to celebrate diverse Britain in all its glory and remind people why the Channel exists - to be the alternative voice of Great Britian.
In response, we teamed up with the award winning director of Channel 4s "We’re the Superhumans", Dougal Wilson , to create a monolithic 'Giant’ out of the famous Channel 4 blocks that make up the logo. A giant that represents the remit and voice of C4.
The spots were filmed across different regions the UK, the Giant personifying the Channel's unique values and public service remit: take creative risks, inspire change and represent a diverse range of voices across the UK.
The giant’s mnemonic call also pays homage to Channel 4’s original and iconic Lambie-Nairn ident, launched in 1982, re-mastering its soundtrack ‘Fourscore’ for a new era.
In 2016 came the shock announcement that Britain's favourite show The Great British Bake Off, was to move from the nice warm comforting arms of the BBC to the anarchic and risky Channel 4. It was Brexit Britain all over again. Or so it seemed, with fans massively divided over the move. But come on...we've got more in common than that which divides us: BAKING. So to celebrate the 2017 launch of the show, we wanted to reminded people that cakes and bakes unite us, by literally baking an ad (in a Channel 4 way of course). It was a move which prompted over a million views on Facebook in the first 5 hours, a Twitter and national newspaper frenzy and a heated discussion on Radio 2, Radio 1 and and even Good Morning Britain on iTV.
The campaign was a success. The first episode consolidated at 12 million viewers - higher than the first launch on the BBC - and brought in Channel 4's biggest audience for 5 years. Furthermore, it delivered the highest number of young viewers for any show on any channel during 2017.
Women's football has become an unstoppable force in recent years. And when Channel 4 secured the rights to air the UEFA Women's EURO we got 'vice world champion' female freestyler Liv Cooke to do what girls that love football do best: kick around a doll's head to launch our EUROs 2017 campaign.
The campaign also featured posters, radio, tactical TV, online trading cards featuring the players that passed the ball from one to another via Carousel on Facebook.
The campaign helped attract the biggest ever UK TV audience for a women's football match, attracting a peak of 3.3 million viewers.
As part of Channel 4's diversity initiative, we invited people from all backgrounds across the UK with a connection to the number four to appear on screen and introduce our peak shows.
17 people from across the UK introduced prime time shows in 130 slots, including a blind footballer who wears the number 4 shirt to a Year 4 class (the world's only Manx Gaelic speaking school), to a driver of the number 4 bus in Edinburgh, to a drag queen who performs at No 4 Canal Street, Manchester.
Real Britannia!
The Jump is an infamous reality TV show on Channel 4 where various 'celebrities' (note the inverted commas) take on the Alps in various skiing tasks.
It really is as good as it sounds.
This year we wanted to play on our 'slebs cocky confidence and bring them crashing down to Earth with Westlife and an Owl.
With new rules and new cars, the all consuming thrill of this years F1 is akin to a legal high - who knows where it's going to take you? And what better way to bring that thrill to life than with a 200mph madcap trip into the unknown. Faaaarrrrr out.
What do you call a show on Channel 4 about Spies, where normal people are put to task by Spies to see if they have what it takes to be Spies? Well, you call it...
Most able bodied people become the opposite on ice. Unless you’re a winter loving Superhuman that is. We collated people’s slippery fails on Facebook to remind them just how hard it is to do anything on ice let alone ski with one leg.
In UK cinemas, these ads came on as the last commercial you saw before the movie, asking people to turn off their phones. Some people did just that. But some didn't. Which is really irritating.
THIS STUFF MATTERS
To completely re-launch Talk Talk, the U.K. telecoms firm, we took a reality TV-style approach to its advertising campaign with director Tom Tagholm.
After a three month interview process of UK families up and down the country, we set our sights on the Sandifords from Blackpool. Mum Julie, Dad Paul and kids Sophie, Lucy, Pete, and Harry. Not forgetting Elvis the dog. We then filmed them non stop for two weeks with 17 unmanned cameras, sifting through hundreds of hours of footage to find ordinary, everyday moments to write around. Why? To show that it's the small moments that matter - particularly moments around TV, mobile and broadband. Whether that's TV dinner in front of the sofa, texting a boyfriend or showing your Aunty how to use Skype.
To showcase the award winning journalists that write for The Times and The Sunday Times we created a Cannes Lions winning print and outdoor campaign that did exactly that. That sounded a bit smug, but it wasn't meant to be.
Freedom Brewery came to us for a simple launch campaign. So we kept it simple with screen prints, teaming up with French artist Thomas Danthony to create four pieces of artwork that were gifted to publicans across the UK, in a nod to the days when brands would make art for pub walls. The work won two D&AD pencils for design as well as a Cannes Lion.
CUT THROUGH THE NOISE
For the first time, we created a joint brand campaign for the The Times & The Sunday Times, demonstrating how both papers cut through the noise to focus on the stories that matter.
HAVE A FLING
We wanted to remind 16-24 year olds that Creme Eggs are only around for a few months of the year.
We felt, it VERY important that they know this.
The campaign HAVE A FLING with a Creme Egg encouraged people to show their love for Creme Egg, through social media as well as good old, TV and press. The campaign trended on Twitter, with hundreds uploading photos. 'Have a Fling' become the 2nd most popular Facebook UK page of that year, gaining a fan base of over 200,000 and making it Cadbury's most successful European social media activity to date, with an average of 47k engaged users per post.
#BLAHBLAHBLAHDATA
The future of reading? Nah. But making the ads was fun. Each print ad had an entire (just readable) novel on one page. The endline reads: SONY READER. UP TO 160 BOOKS IN ONE.
EVE OF WAR
Findmypast.com was the first company ever to make the 1939 Census publicly available online. To raise awareness of this and encourage people to find about their ancestry through Findmypast we created a series of posters and films resurrecting 1939 Britain and juxtaposing it with life today.
#DOYOUROWNTHING
The iD brand was borne out of listening to consumers and understanding their frustrations and needs, thus creating a network that is as individual as the person. This sense of uniqueness is what celebrated through the platform of “#DOYOUROWNTHING”.
(Footnote: I copy and pasted the above from a press release. I know. Lazy copywriting. Sorry).
We spent time with individuals who define themselves through different ways. The Philedelphia Riding Club - young men that ride and tend to horses in the ghetto to avoid a life of crime. Poetic Pilgrimage - a female Muslim hip hop duo who make music despite the pressures of the Muslim community. Gary Stocker - the Human Cannonball, who left the life of a high flying city lawyer to join the circus. And Lee Hoy, the blind boxer who fights able bodied fighters despite his disability. Each month we focused on a different subject with online content being produced each week.
Below are sample films from each mini campaign.
ZINGOLO
Cadbury Glass and a Half Productions wanted to celebrate Dairy Milk becoming Fairtrade certified. So we launched Glass and a Half Records, paired up with Ghana's leading hip hop star and the Uk's number one producer (Paul Epworth of "Friendly Fires" and "Florence and the Machine" fame) to create Zingolo: a single to bring the joyous nature of Ghanaian culture to the UK.
Orange no longer exists in the UK. But its ads live on. On this website anyway. Done in conjunction with the directors MEGAFORCE.
GONE
A film made with directors 32 to raise awareness during Alzheimer's Week. That's it. No print or anything else. Sorry.
Look. I know. It's not as good as Gorilla. Jeez.
But it it shifted a lot of units, so...
D&AD Invite: stickers you had to wear to attend the Annual launch party. See, NOW you'll go.
Mmmmmmmm. Ben & Jerry's.
Guess what the secret ingredient of Cadbury 'Dairy Milk' is?
As a side project, I collaborated with designers such as Dave Dye to help Mark Denton rebrand the Creative Circle. To be honest, it was mostly them. But I did the concept, and design on the membership cards and packs in the vain of Dennis the Menace's Fan Club. So...
We produced a selection of wrapping paper at Christmas that reminded people, via a cut off coupon, to donate to the Third World whilst they were feeling festive and generous. Each paper was designed around the things donations would go toward.
We put this coupon advert in the property section of major newspapers to remind people how many had lost their homes during the Caribbean Hurricane that swept through Jamaica, Haiti and Grenada.
Er...Happy Christmas?
