Our first TV ad campaign

Almost exactly 7 years today, I created this blog in the hope that it would help me get a career in advertising.

With no degree or experience in that field, a blog seemed a good starting point; somewhere to share my thoughts, work and progress with potential employers to at least show passionate I was.

I remember debating whether or not to bother start a blog -
"At 24, I am too late for a career change?"......

..........

My first post was about one of the many ad grad schemes I applied to and, honestly, the amount of effort and thought I put into them was stellar.
But after a while, I started a career client side and I'd basically accepted the closest I'd get to ads were briefing them into agencies.

Funnily enough, it was this blog which took me down that different path, yet it's still resulted in what I originally wanted to do. How neat.

So, 7 years later, (sorry for the wait guys...), here I am, finally writing a post about my first nationwide TV advert for one of the biggest brands in the UK.

time to get excited

To drive awareness & relevancy of Lucozade Zero this year, we coupled up with the hottest show on telly, Love Island, investing a cool £6mil.

Not only that, but it was LRS' first ever total campaign led completely in-house, using our TED team.

I was TED lead across the project; identifying our strategy, planning creative comms, and even writing the TV script.

TED dream team on set of our ad

When starting the project, it was really important to us to keep the whole campaign visually consistent with a clear, simple message for the consumer. So often with campaigns, various parts are worked on by different agencies or teams, so you don't always get a consistent look & feel.

As an in-house team, we were at an advantage because we had total control, not only creatively, but ensuring everything worked hard to land brand objectives as, after all, we are the client too.

So here's a little look at the campaign...

Awareness

TV ad:

We kicked off the 8 week campaign with a summery TV ad where the hero girl is looking for her perfect match. She optimistically engages with a couple of guys until she humorously realises they are not quite for her. With the ding of a Love Island text, it’s a new arrival, and it’s 100% her type. Finally, she’s met the one that ticks all her boxes; Lucozade Zero, a drink that tastes great and has zero sugar.

Click to watch

We worked closely with comedy director Matt Carter and collaborated throughout with ITV's production house to deliver a high quality ad with a very Love Island feel.

When working on the strategy, I felt it was important that Lucozade Zero had a strong & natural connection with Love Island, as opposed to just sticking our logo on their stuff with no real reason for being partners.

Love Island contestants are very picky when it comes to what they look for in a partner; they won't settle. Our product embodies not having to settle; with both great taste and no sugar, there's no compromise. With Lucozade Zero, you can have what you fancy, which is how we came up with a fantastic, suggestive proposition for our comms and in-store: Fancy It?

It made The Grocers' Ad of the Week, and we also got a nifty article in Campaign magazine where I got a cheeky name check.

Nationwide OOH:

We led with Pink Lemonade flavour, not because it was the most "feminine" and Love Island-y, but because it was the most distinguishable SKU from our core Lucozade Energy range.

Purchase

In Store:

Not only did we design all point of sale in store, but we created bespoke digital Smartscreens for Tesco which show different lines when the temperature changes. When it's hotter weather our ads say "it's hotting up" and "time to cool down" - which make them more relevant to shoppers.

  
Relevancy

Reactive Social:

With an estimated 49m impressions, our social posts have already way outperformed what we predicted, with huge engagement scores. Our tone of voice fit perfectly with the Love Island audience, and using clips from the show helped drive relevance with our target audience.

Snapchat:

Our lens tied in perfectly with our campaign. With a beauty filter, "Fancy It?" showed in the sunglasses, and when you blew a kiss at the screen, the words were replaced with the product.
With 21secs of play time compared to an average of 10secs, we flew past industry benchmarks.

Influencer:

Even our influencer was managed in house. We chose sex & relationship influencer Oloni to seed out tweets, reaching 2m people per post, asking questions and setting challenges to her followers.
My favourite was the one below where she set a challenge to text someone you fancy and then send back their responses. Some comedy gold in there.

Working client side for the last 5 years, I never thought I'd be in the position to write & create my own ad, let alone an entire campaign. Things have a funny way of working out.

Thanks to the creation of our in-house team and the support of brand & leadership teams, we were able to prove that you can create strong ATL campaigns without paying huge agency costs.

And great news - Lucozade Zero sales are in growth.

ALL DAY

The campaign is running until end of July, so if you see any of our OOH or in store displays - please do send me pics.

And as the article never published the credit list, here's a massive shout out to the whole project team.

LRS:
Sarah Smart, Brand Manager, Lucozade Zero
Laz Ioannou, Creative Director, TED
Laura Cripps, Creative Strategist & Project Lead, TED

ITV:
Dwayne Clarke, Senior Brand Manager, Love Island
Kevin O’Brien, Executive Producer, ITV Studios
Igor Degtiarev, Line Producer, ITV Studio
Grace Healy, Partnership Activation Manager, ITV

TV
Writer: Laura Cripps
Director: Matt Carter
DOP: Katie Swaine
Production Company: ITV
Post-production: Marshall St Editors
Music: Sniffy Dog

Photography: Richard Allen
Design: Laz Ioannou, Emily Spedding
Social & Digital: Sharin Johal

TED Producer: Aaron Scoones

Media agency: MediaCom
Media team: Tom Mills, Charlotte Allchin