BDDH has unveiled its first work for Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries
since winning the account in November last year.
The pounds 1 million campaign for Banks’s beer, which kicks off this
week, will consist of five TV ads in the style of mini-documentaries,
featuring real people who have strange obsessions or hobbies. The spots
are all unscripted and star real-life eccentrics.
The first ad in the series shows a middle-aged woman who dresses as a
gnome and runs a gnome sanctuary. She is interviewed about her sanctuary
and is asked if she’s tried Banks’s. When she doesn’t answer, the
voiceover says: ‘Banks’s is a beer that’s not too bitter, nor too sweet,
making it balanced. I think you should try it.’ The endline is ‘Banks’s.
A balanced beer in an unbalanced world.’
The remaining four executions show a group of worm charmers, a man who
has filled his house and garden with traffic cones, a woman who is
obsessed with test cards and a man who celebrates Christmas every day.
The campaign’s strategy is to target maturing younger drinkers who are
moving from lager to bitter. The commercials deliberately avoid using
descriptions such as ‘smooth’ or ‘creamy’.
The campaign is to highlight the change of name from Banks’s Mild to
Banks’s, and also to try and re-position the brand more towards younger
drinkers. Leslie Butterfield, chairman of BDDH, said: ‘Wolverhampton and
Dudley sells more than one million pints of Banks’s a week, and we
wanted to reflect the quaffable flavour of it.’
The ads were written by Owen Lee, art directed by Gary Robinson and
directed by Kirk Jones through Tomboy Films. Media is through CIA.
