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Team of bald women take on the BBC Eggheads and win £29,000 for charity!

On Thursday 17th March 2016 at 6pm, the BBC aired a unique episode of its hit TV series ‘Eggheads’ on BBC2. Aside from the usual nail-biting challenge of an amateur team taking on ‘possibly the greatest quiz team in Britain’, this very special episode saw a team of five completely bald women taking on the challengers in a bid to win the current cash prize. The team, which included apt's very own Account Director, Victoria Petkovic-Short, all suffer from Alopecia, an auto-immune condition which causes partial or total hair loss. They took to our screens to raise awareness of the condition, making a huge visual impact along the way. Even better, they pledged to donate the winning to National Charity Alopecia UK. 

Back Row L-R Eggheads Team: CJ De Mooi, Kevin Ashman, Lisa Thiel, Judith Keppel, Presenter Jeremy Vine, Pat Gibson. Front Row L-R Challengers ‘A Clearer Head’ Team: Reserve Suzie Barker-Mewis, Team Captain Sue Hampton, Victoria Petkovic-Short, Marie Jenks, Jeanette Oliver, Emma Skipper. 

Victoria and the unusual team of challengers on the BBC2 show ‘Eggheads’, secured a cash prize of £29,000. Challengers are told the cash prize during filming, and the team A Clearer Head, who had expected to be playing for a couple of thousand pounds, gasped in shock as Jeremy Vine announced a £29,000 cash prize.  

Four rounds of questions followed, as the challengers took on the Eggheads in the head-to-head rounds, with three out of four challengers beating their Egghead. Only one lost, amidst tough questions on historic politics, leaving four challengers to take on two Eggheads in the final round. 

The final saw a showdown between four of the five challengers and the two remaining Eggheads Pat Gibson and Lisa Thiel, and included a randomly selected, but incredibly apt question for the bald challengers, which was met with peals of laughter: 

“What colour is the head of the eagle known as the bald eagle” 

A shock incorrect answer from the Eggheads in the last of the initial three questions, saw the challengers ‘A Clearer Head’ pip them to the post and win £29,000. The team, who had applied to the show in a hope of raising public awareness of their condition, had never expected to win and were overwhelmed by the result. The money has been donated to national charity Alopecia UK, who work to improve the lives of those with alopecia through their aims of support, awareness and research. For a charity as small as Alopecia UK, these funds represent a significant proportion of their annual income and will make a number of previously unattainable projects and campaigns, possible. 

Sue Hampton, Team Captain, and Ambassador for Alopecia UK says “Watching Eggheads, I had an idea that awareness of alopecia could be raised, if I could just recruit five more women prepared to go on TV without a wig, hat or scarf. It took eight or nine months to pull a team together but we did it, embarking on our bald challenge on national television. To win was a huge shock and I cannot tell you the pressure that the team felt, knowing that the prize was £29,000. Somehow, that seemed like a bigger deal, yet we didn’t choke and we managed to win! Even more amazing given that the team only met each other the night before the show! We’ve had a really long wait since the filming and haven’t been able to tell anyone, so it is great that the episode has now aired! The money has gone to a great cause and will be put to good use. We couldn’t have hoped for anything better! 

Spooktacular Halloween ad campaigns

It’s October and it’s almost time for the Halloween celebrations. Pumpkins, ghouls and witches are all recognised with the increasingly popular holiday and this year highly recognised brands have truly got involved with the Halloween spirit.

Read on to find out more about our favourite Halloween campaigns:

Tesco Spookermarket: Every little fright helps

The popular supermarket brand went all out this year by scaring its customers and catching it all on camera. The advert opens to what seems to be a seemingly innocent Halloween display complete with pumpkins and masked mannequins. One of the ‘mannequins’ however is ready to scare and gives shoppers a fright when they suddenly move.

One shopper is haunted by a phantom trolley while looking at the vegetables and a gruesome scene of bloodied hands in ice is displayed for shoppers at the deli counter. Other shoppers are also greeted with quite a fright when reaching for their toilet rolls and ordering their cold meats at the deli as spookily dressed workers jumped out to give them a scare.

Let’s just hope none of the shoppers were so frightened that they ran out without paying for their shopping!

View the advert for yourself:

 

Scary Special Offers from Pizza Hut

How can you ‘win’ at Halloween? Well, Pizza Hut has all the answers for you in their spooky Halloween advert; ranging from how to don a top notch costume, to the tasty treats and mean tricks! The opening scenes feature some jump scares, resulting in many people falling over (and into a river, even) making it laughable at the get-go.

Narrated by a lady donning a jester hat, firstly they cover Halloween costumes. She explains that you need to “get creative” with them, showing us a slideshow of photos of people dressed up, including their pets! There was a dog wearing a hotdog costume (get it?) as well as a cat dressed as a pirate; my personal favourite.

Next is treats! They’re very important and you can never leave a house without one, or five. During the narration, there is a montage of clips showing children devouring their sweets. But what is the best treat of all time you ask? Pizza of course! The parents proceed to hand out to the children a combo of Pepsi and pizza and they do look very happy indeed.

Last but not least, the tricks. Leading on from the opening scenes of the advert, a longer montage is shown of these classic jump scare pranks ranging from a ‘dead’ man being thrown into a lift, someone jumping out of a bin and dancing scarecrow!

The adverts’ signoff is a special offer – “order the twisted crust pizza and add any Pepsi 2L for $1” – not bad! All in all, this is a very funny advert and it definitely put a smile on my face – even if it was at the expense of others...

Take a look here:

  

Airbnb: Stay where during Halloween?!

Airbnb conjured up an extremely spooky campaign this year. The accommodation / holiday rental site is offering guests the chance to check in to the Paris Catacombs for a night of relaxation. Home to around six million souls, the house rules include ‘no tricks, but plenty of treats’ and ‘no bobbing for apples in the Catacomb pools.’

Well Airbnb, we’d like to say thanks but no thanks; how can you relax with six million skulls watching you? We’ll pass...

Check it out here: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/night-at/paris-catacombs

Tetley Tea, ahh that’s better...

After reading about all of the frightful campaigns Tetley tea have gone for a more, well less spooky affair. The video shows a pumpkin being intricately carved into Gaffer’s face in a time lapse sequence. Although there is some creepy music going on it’s a lot less scary and fun for all to enjoy!

View the Tetley tea ad here:

 

 

 

 

Inspired cross-promotion takes cheesy stock photography to a new level!

In a brilliant cross-promotional move between Twentieth Century Fox and iStock by Getty Images, a series of ultra-cheesy stock images have been created featuring the cast of Unfinished Business, including Vince Vaughn and Tom Wilkinson. They're free to use (editorial only) and will be available in batches over the next few weeks - download the first four here...

Having used quite a few shots like these in our time we think it's inspired! Would love to see them used in an internal staff newsletter...

Dave darling, you’re so Moneysupermaket! #EpicStrut

Whilst it may not be new, in the office today we’re talking Moneysupermarket’s advert, which sees businessman ‘Dave’ nonchalantly twerking his way to work – yup, you heard that right.

 It starts off with Dave getting out of a car and walking down the street on what seems to be a normal commute to work. With that look in his eye and Pussycat Dolls “Don’t cha” playing in the background, you know everything isn’t quite what it seems. The general public stare, looking confused, and the camera pans down to showcase Dave’s short shorts and 6-ich high heels! He struts his stuff down the streets joined by a gang of dancers, shaking his hips towards guest star Sharon Osbourne who declares “Dave darling, you’re so Moneysupermarket.”

The advert made its debut during ITV1’s revamped show Stars in their Eyes, and social media users can track the latest twerking shenanigans using the hashtag #EpicStrut

This is definitely a memorable advert, and whilst not necessarily directing our brains back to the thought of insurance, the image of Dave’s twerking behind will certainly stick.

 

It’s that time of year - time for the Super bowl 2015! Or should we say endless advertisements?!

The United States has been in full swing celebrating the National Football League Superbowl and with the championships being one of the most watched sporting events in the world; people in the UK will wait until the wee hours of the morning to make sure they don’t miss a game... but we all know that with the Superbowl comes a battle of the ads.

Many Superbowl advertisements have gone down in history and it’s not because they interrupt the sporting entertainment. In 2013, over 50% of the Superbowl viewers just tuned in to watch the slightly creatively crazed ads. However to advertise to the global viewers comes at a huge price...a 30 second slot will cost you around $4 million and for a 60 second slot you’d be looking at paying a jaw dropping $8 million!

Newcastle Brown Ale couldn’t afford to produce a multi-million dollar advertisement for the 2015 Superbowl; they could however, afford to produce an action packed storyboard! The ad, which can be found on their ‘IfWeMadeIt’ website, details typically unrealistic scenarios that can all be solved with a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. The scene is set with a desert beach island in the middle of the ocean, a man washed up on the beach and a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale that washes up too. The cap is popped and immediately thousands of bikini clad women are before him, a little like the Lynx advert that aired a few years back. The storyboard continues with a handful of surreal scenarios including a wild beach party complete with dancing sharks, deadly deep sea robots, fuming football gorillas and cool skate boarding cats all whilst throwing life saving bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale! It certainly would have been a Superbowl ad that would have kept a significant amount of viewers entertained, especially if they could’ve afforded to make it!

 

Fast Food giant McDonald’s could obviously afford to have a slot in the Superbowl ads but it’s not the ‘Give Lovin Get Lovin’ ad that is making the news. Brands have been trending nationally on Twitter due to the pre-game and in-game advertisements and McDonalds has been very clever retweeting thousands of other marketing spots and competitions; the best bit is that McDonalds have been adding ‘lovin’ into each one. McDonalds may just be doing better with their social media this year than their actual Big Game TV spot!

Jeep chose to enter the Superbowl battle of the ads to show off their new off-road-lite model Renegade, the ad consists of various environmental shots from around the world with shots introducing the newly modelled vehicle. It is shot with soft camera movements and the transitions are clean cut with background track of folk music titled This Land is Your Land. It could be slightly embarrassing for Jeep because late last year North Face created a very similar advertisement, in fact almost exactly the same; even the same background track was used! The only differences between the two are the different logos and unique selling points; someone must’ve really liked the North Face ad at Jeep and decided to use the idea...

 

Of course, over the years, many Superbowl ads have been shocking and been stereotypical towards genders and this year’s example has to be the parody advert from Totino’s Pizza Rolls. The advert opens to a room full of men and a woman serving the branded pizza rolls, she then retires back to the kitchen and speaks to the audience saying how bored she used to be whilst waiting for the next batch of snacks to be ready; she then introduces the Super Bowl Activity Pack For Women with small puzzles and toys to keep women entertained whilst serving the ‘boys’.

 

This year’s Superbowl has seen many big brand companies such as Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Doritos and Toyota all take part in the battle of the ads but some of the favourites this year have been ‘The Brady Bunch’ by Snickers sticking to the ‘You’re Not You When You’re Hungry’ campaign with an appearance from the highly tattooed and slightly scary looking Danny Trejo, as Marcia Brady.  Another is The ‘Lost Dog’ ad from Budweiser; obviously the story follows a lost puppy that is rescued by a group of horses from the jaws of a wolf – how heart warming.

So once again the battle of the ads are over for 2015 as NFL Superbowl comes to an end, they’ll be back next year with crazy and shocking ads, many companies may have even started storyboarding already... if not they’ll certainly need to start budgeting for their spot...

Three rival McVities with new marketing campaign

McVities had been rooted as our favourite advert of 2014 so far – until Three released their new advert!

Continuing their success from Socks, the dancing Shetland Pony Three has released a new campaign featuring a singing girl and kitten as she cycles through her neighbourhood belting out “We Built This City” by Starship.  

Three has been very good at finding the perfect songs to include in their adverts – songs everyone knows the lyrics to but don’t always remember until it is played; this classic eighties hit has us all singing along every time. The advert promotes Three’s “We all need silly stuff” campaign using “#SingItKitty” to allow others to share pictures of “cute, silly or unexpected images and videos”.

Tom Malleschitz, Marketing Director at Three, commented: “Last year we were blown away with the runaway success of our moonwalking pony, Socks. As the network built for the internet we understand people’s behaviour online and know that cute, silly, or unexpected images and videos are what make people tick. We are very excited to launch this advert and hope it will simply bring a smile to your face when you watch it.”

It certainly brings a smile to our faces watching the kitten with what looks a moustache singing along to the catchy theme music and we’re looking forward to where Three will take it next!

 

McVities packets give birth to endearing animals in new ad

McVities £12 million ad campaign has made us all want to gobble up puppies and kittens by making us all ‘awwww’ at the sight of adorable animals appearing from biscuit wrappers; or at least keep them for pets anyway! Three different TV ads have been launched showing different animals crawling out of biscuit wrappers, being enjoyed by people and then oddly turning into biscuits and being eaten. The ads include puppies, kittens and a monkey. The aim is to give the nation a giant snuggle or cuddle.

Sarah Heynen, McVities director said “We are trying to convey the feeling you get when eating a McVities biscuit and beneath that the feeling you get when eating each individual type of biscuit. With Digestives, it’s the crumbly cuddle, the arm around the shoulder - the warmth you get when eating a biscuit. Chocolate Digestives are a chocolaty snuggle and Jaffa Cake’s and its zesty orange centre is about zesty mischief.” 

The cute factor plays a big part in these ads with the word ‘sweeet’ being shown at the end of each one of these ads. The word ‘sweeet’ has also been used as a hashtag on social media when talking about the new biscuits adverts. The down side is the fact that they’re not real, the animals are mechanically made! The grey fluffy kittens crawling out of chocolate digestives biscuit wrappers warmed the hearts of the office cat lovers making this one the office favourite out of the three ads. The purring and the squeaky little meow that comes from one of the kittens is just too cute. As big tea drinkers and biscuit dunkers here at the office we are certainly partial to a daily biscuit or two and those moments of eating your favourite biscuit definitely does give you a warm fuzzy feeling. 

Along with the TV ads, McVities has launched a new website featuring a series of cute features and games using the animals from the TV ads. We have had some fun today sending each other email cuddles featuring our favourite blue eyed kittens or having them run across our screens while we work, it has been slightly distracting but a great idea from McVities to engage with the consumer. 

Hedgehog sculpture makes the UK curious

Last summer saw 81 5ft-tall Gromit sculptures ”unleashed” in Bristol City Centre as part of a public art trail, which after 10 weeks, were taken to auction - raising over £2.3 million for Bristol Children’s Hospital. 

This trail had an amazing 1.18 million visitors not only from Bristol and the UK but also North America and Australia! The boost for Bristol’s economy was incredible with over £123 million spent in the city on accommodation, travel and gifts for the once-in-a-lifetime experience! With this high level of engagement and fans around the world, it is clear why other businesses would choose to use unmissable sculptures to promote their products – or TV shows!

To promote Sir David Attenborough’s new Natural Curiosities series, a giant Hedgehog has been put up in Clapham Common, London.

The sculpture took over 2 months to design and build and stands at 7ft tall, 12ft long and 8ft wide – making it larger than a Rhino! With 2,000 soft wood spikes it’s definitely a hedgehog that can’t be missed hiding underneath a bonfire!

Source: Metro

Attenborough said: “The hedgehog is one of Britain’s greatest natural curiosities and this sculpture is a fitting tribute to one of our most delightful species. The fact that a quarter of British adults have never seen a wild hedgehog suggests that we are witnessing rapidly dwindling numbers which is a concern”.

Although it is hard to beat the popularity of the Gromit statues, we think that this sculpture will definitely prove a talking point. Other animals to be shown in the Natural Curiosities series include Owls and Cuckoos and we wonder whether 7ft sculptures of these animals will be appearing alongside this hedgehog anytime soon. 

John Lewis Laid Bare

John Lewis is the brand on everyone’s lips this week as their Christmas advert launched during ‘The X Factor’ on Saturday. The ad is over 2 minutes long which meant it was the only advert shown in one ad break of the highly popular talent show.

Although the £7 million pound advert only features one John Lewis product it has certainly got people talking about the luxury department store. After last year’s advert being so memorable everyone had been waiting in anticipation to see if this year’s could beat it. The response has been mixed in terms of whether it has beaten last year’s romantic snowman story. Not only did last year’s advert include more John Lewis products, it also included people which has been said to be a good and a bad thing.

 This year’s advert is magical and has that Disney feel to it but the only item it promotes is an alarm clock, and yes we have checked – you can purchase that exact alarm clock featured on the advert. John Lewis have cleverly launched Bear and the Hare merchandise including wrapping paper, mug, onesie and cuddly toy, a lot of these products have already sold out online. John Lewis’ website also offers a ‘make your own’ Christmas card service which is Bear and the Hare themed.

 

The launch of the advert prompted 86,300 mentions on Twitter over the weekend, according to research from We are Social which was a 29% increase in mentions from last year’s Christmas ad launch weekend. Only 1% of tweets were outright negative about the ad with the positive tweets saying how the ad had reduced them to tears and how ‘cute’ and ‘sweet’ it was. The brands social media presence saw a huge increase over the weekend with 7,000 new Twitter follower, 12,000 new Facebook fans and 4,600 additional YouTube subscribers.

Although last weekend seemed to be the launch of all of the Christmas adverts this seems to be the favourite and most talked about. Radio 1’s breakfast show couldn’t help but discuss the touching ad on Monday as they also played the adverts theme song, sang by Lily Allen which reached Number 5 in the charts on Sunday even though the ad only launched the previous day. The song is currently at Number 2 in the iTunes chart.

Coca Cola has traditionally gone with the classic ‘Holidays are coming’ ad that gets everyone in the mood for Christmas as that is usually the first one shown.  The Coca-Cola logo is unmissable throughout the iconic ad with the trucks covered in large logos and in Coca-colas brand colour scheme. The product is shown clearly as Santa is seen drinking a bottle of coke on one of the trucks as it drives off. Here at apt we love how Coca-Cola has repeated the truck ad making it iconic and is always seen as the start of the countdown to Christmas.

 Here at apt we have been having a bit of a discussion on these two Christmas adverts in particular and one of our employees suggested that John Lewis could’ve maybe shown the same advert as last year although this is debatable looking at the response via social media. However although this ad has been talked about a lot through various forms of media we can’t help but ask the question, does it make you want to buy into the brand? It certainly doesn’t have us rushing into John Lewis wanting to buy Christmas presents from there. We are going to wait until the Christmas sales figures are released to see if the £7 million advert did increase sales for John Lewis or if it has just boosted Brand identity. Even that is questionable as the only form of branding in the advert is the logo shown at the end.

The brand has made a hare raising Twitter mistake. The bio on the John Lewis twitter account directs people to @JohnLewis_Bear and @JohnLewis_Hare: but the accounts tweeting are actually @JohnLewisBear and @JohnLewisHare.

John Lewis Has told The Drum that the Twitter handle was changed to the more streamlined version with no underscore to help people find the accounts.

This is not the only Twitter handle screw-up that people have had with John Lewis since the ad was launched: @JohnLewis was receiving a lot of messages complimenting him on his Christmas ad, which he duly passed on to @JohnLewisretail.

Take a look at the advert for yourself here:

 

What do you think about the John Lewis Christmas advert? Does it have you wanting to go into your nearest John Lewis or do you just think it is a cute advert? Here at apt we would love to hear your views and join in on our discussion.

Big-name brands serve an ace with Murray celebrations

After a gruelling 77 years of hurt, pain and disappointment Great Britain’s Andy Murray captured the nation’s hearts this Sunday by winning his first Wimbledon grand slam title, whoop! The nation went into a Murray frenzy (or what we like to call Murraymania) over his spectacular achievement. So much so, it took just seconds before Murraymania spread off the court and into people’s everyday lives with sponsors, newspapers and even supermarkets joining in with the celebrations. Official sponsors of Andy Murray, Adidas, were first to spark the Murraymania movement, releasing a very clever campaign. The UK sports brand used social media platform twitter to celebrate, tweeting their 'Wimbledone' image as soon as Murray hit the winning shot, receiving a hero’s welcome with over 3,000 retweets and was hugely popular on the social media site.

Although, as far as Tennis PR stunts go, we think Morrisons topped the lot. The supermarket giants hit a winner when they designed  a two-part PR stunt showing their support for Britain’s Andy Murray.

First of all, Morrisons pulled out all the stops by renaming its Wimbledon based store with a clever pun - ‘Murrisons’. The supermarket chain then decided to change the name of its Wimbledon store to 'Murriwins' after the tennis star won the Wimbledon men's singles title for the first time. Morrison’s tweeted:

"Congrats to #Wimbledon Champion @andy_murray! How are you celebrating? We've given our store a special makeover”.

Here at apt we see this as a fantastic coup to get national publicity. Any marketing manager will tell you that publicity is valuable and this is just the same when applying it to Morrison’s.  By capitalising on this opportunity Morrison’s will have enhanced their brand awareness with their consumers. Building brand awareness is essential for building brand equity and can reap all sorts of awards. High brand equity is a key quality to generate loyalty, which in turn, can increase long term sales and market share. Take apple for example, they’ve developed loyal followings on the strength of a brand that’s known for unique designs, elite equality and innovative leadership. This loyal following will then lead to greater profits, with consumers willing to pay extra for a name they trust and value.

If you’d like to hear more about the marketing and PR campaigns during Wimbledon, check out our previous blog “Wimbledon embarks on multi-platform campaign!:”