Today DDB UK unveils its new campaign for the Harvey Nichols Summer Sale, which sees them having a little fun with the colloquial phrase ‘I was so excited, I nearly wet myself!’ Harvey Nichols is famous for its fantastic and exciting Sale, when customers can pick up the most exclusive pieces at much reduced prices.

The tongue-in-cheek campaign, illustrated through four different executions, features models striking poses dressed in items from the current Harvey Nichols Spring Summer 2012 collections alongside a line that reads “The Harvey Nichols Sale. Try to contain your excitement”. Tell-tale wet patches on the models’ outfits suggest that they have struggled to do just that.

Jeremy Craigen at DDB UK commented: “I wet myself when I saw this idea. That says it all really.”

Julia Bowe, Group Press and Marketing Director at Harvey Nichols said: “We wanted a campaign that not only promoted our Summer Sale, but which was also something we could have fun with and entertain our customers in a light hearted way. The creative has uniquely captured the excitement associated with our Summer Sale in a playful, humorous way that stands out from the crowd and projects the Harvey Nichols sense of fun.’

The Harvey Nichols Summer Sale launches in store and online on Wednesday 13th June with Up to 50% Off*.

Harvey Nichols stores are located in London (Knightsbridge), Bristol, Dublin, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Leeds. For more information visit www.harveynichols.com

Virgin Media launches multi-million pound marketing campaign to tell customers their broadband speeds are doubling

Virgin Media is launching its biggest ever multi-channel marketing campaign as it prepares to double the broadband speeds of over four million UK households.

The campaign by DDB UK uses iconic figures Usain Bolt and Sir Richard Branson to reinforce Virgin Media’s position as the fastest broadband provider in the UK and sees the introduction of the brand-line ‘Keep Up’.

Against an early backdrop of predictable 2012 advertising, the ‘Keep Up’ campaign has veered away from showing the athlete in performance mode. Instead we see Bolt – the fastest man ever to walk the planet – resplendent in running kit and spikes, trying to persuade us that he is, in fact, Sir Richard Branson. In an attempt to convince, he talks to us direct from the Virgin founder’s office wearing a Branson-esque blonde goatee beard. Much to Bolt’s frustration, his efforts are interrupted by the real Branson, who repeatedly tries to get the usurper out of his office.

The ads are directed by Seth Gordon, most recently known for hit comedy movie Horrible Bosses, with the initial execution airing for the first time on Saturday 14th during primetime ITV1 show Take Me Out. The campaign launches on TV and Facebook the night before with a series of innovative five second ‘Bolt-on’ teasers.

The campaign has already started with Usain Bolt pretending to be Sir Richard Branson on Twitter during the week, with the evolving banter between the two using the hashtag #IamRBranson.

The theme continues across all media, including TV, press, outdoor, social, retail and online, with a new campaign site to promote the benefits of the UK’s fastest broadband and to remind current and prospective Virgin Media customers of the company’s supremacy in the broadband market.

All media points customers to Virgin Media’s dedicated website which goes live Friday evening where they can find out when their broadband speed will be doubled. The TV ads end with Bolt pulling his famous ‘To Di World’ lightning pose and waggling his finger at the web address www.virginmedia.com/doublespeed. Media planning was by Fifty6.

Jeff Dodds, executive director of brand and marketing communications at Virgin Media, said: “We’ve got a long history of giving our customers more and we wanted to let them know about the exciting boost they’ll soon get from us. Our competitors’ customers might also feel a twinge of envy when they hear about this as what better spokesperson for our superfast broadband than Usain Bolt? He’s the living embodiment of speed! It’s a brilliantly simple idea but the trick was to avoid the obvious sportsman endorsement clichés. This is where DDB UK has done us proud by taking a refreshing, and typically Virgin self-deprecating and cheeky approach to the brief.”

Xavier Rees, managing partner at DDB UK added: “This was an exciting campaign to work on as it’s not often a brand gives something so significant back to its customers.

It’s also not often that you get to do something original with two icons of this magnitude. Keep Up is a fantastic campaign idea and plays strongly to consumers’ desire to avoid missing out on the latest innovations so all the ingredients are in place for a highly effective campaign with massive cut-through.” 

DDB UK reveals a new Christmas video for Harvey Nichols today, which drops audiences into the embarrassing reality of the morning after the office Christmas party… the dreaded Walk of Shame.

The creative plays on the theme of ‘the morning after the night before’. A big Christmas party perhaps, followed by an early morning journey home, complete with the tell-tale symptoms: the slight limp from the killer heels (which seemed a good idea at the time), accompanied by under-eye bags that would rival even Victoria Beckham’s largest tote and bed hair. Party-goers making their way home, eyes down, cheeks ablaze, trying to ignore disapproving stares of the 8am commuters; and the wolf-whistles from the builders perched on scaffolding above.

The film culminates with our ‘hero’ girl walking back to her flat doing what looks more like a ‘stride of pride’. She clearly never made it home, but something sets her apart from the others. Her Harvey Nichols outfit still looks fantastic and she walks with her head held high. The line reads: “Avoid the Walk of Shame this Season. Harvey Nichols Womenswear.” The ad ends with a call to action to: Share your #walkofshame on Twitter.

The Christmas video aims to promote the luxury fashion retailers selection of eveningwear, alongside international fashion designers and those beauty essentials to help you look and feel fabulous throughout the party season.

Julia Bowe, Group Press and Marketing Director at Harvey Nichols, commented: “We love taking something true to life and having fun with it and seeing how Harvey Nichols can make things better. We know that a fabulous outfit can cover a multitude of sins - and in answer to whether or not I have ever done the walk of shame… no comment.”

The video was written by Mike Crowe and Rob Messeter and directed by James Rouse through Outsider. It will be sent out to all Harvey Nichols’ friends, customers and suppliers, and hosted on the Harvey Nichols site and YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/HarveyNicholsUK 

Marmite’s new ‘Hate Cuisine’ campaign firmly positions the nation’s most divisive yeast extract against pretentious food and exploits the product’s versatility, presenting it as the perfect cooking ingredient to help banish bland meals for good.

The activity will launch with a new TV ad premiered on Monday 4^th July 2011, introducing animated characters Dave and Geoff (a frog and snail) who champion no-nonsense cooking. The ads will run till the end of September, rolling out across TV, digital channels and print exclusively with the Evening Standard, directing consumers to a campaign Facebook page, recipe app and competition which will be launched to coincide with the ads.

DDB’s evolution of the classic love hate positioning is aimed to attract a younger, twenty-something audience than the spread’s family heartland. The ads present Marmite as the ultimate flavour-enhancer of the simple, uncomplicated dishes that are staples in the often busy and spontaneous pre-family lifestyle. Amongst the dishes showcased are spaghetti bolognese, poached egg on crumpet and BBQ chicken.

The campaign will be amplified with Splendid’s ‘Marmite Mondays’ PR activity, comprised of an online mini-series starring Trigger Happy TV comedian Dom Joly spoofing celebrity chefs whilst cooking easy and tasty Marmite meals. The mini-series will be launched on Monday 18^th July and will be supported by a research-led news story. The idea is based on the insight that the target audience often view Mondays as the worst day of the week. This presented the opportunity for Marmite to take ownership of the day and provide inspirations to brighten up the start of the week, with all activity launching on Mondays.

The campaign is a collaboration between DDB (advertising), Splendid Communications (PR and digital), Mindshare (media planning) and Iris (ECRM).

Tom Denyard, Marketing Manager at Unilever, commented, “We’re delighted to be launching the new ‘Hate Cuisine’ campaign and expect the different elements, including the Dave and Geoff animations and Marmite Mondays concept, to particularly appeal to our lapsed audience who love the brand but would welcome more inventive ways to incorporate the product in their every day meals. It’s a really exciting time for Marmite and we hope the campaign to be a huge success.”

Patrick McClelland, Art Director for Marmite  at DDB UK commented, “Feargal and I thought the ideal characters to debunk the pretentious culture of ‘Haute Cuisine’ would be Dave and Geoff - a frog and a snail. Not only do they have a vested interest in doing so but, coincidentally, they also just happen to be huge Marmite fans”

Virgin Media today unveiled the first advertising campaign for its next generation Virgin Media: TiVo® Service. Promising to be the best way to watch TV, ever, the TiVo service combines the live TV schedule with catch-up TV, a huge library of on-demand programming and popular web-based applications alongside a market-leading personal video recorder. With a simple way of finding great content and intelligent recommendations based on a household’s telly habits, the new service makes it easier than ever for Virgin Media customers to discover new types of entertainment they’ll love.

Virgin Media’s multi-million pound ad campaign is fronted by Marc Warren, star of Hustle and Mad Dogs. Created by DDB UK, the campaign involves TV, digital, print, retail, experiential and social media, beginning today with three ten-second TV spots and a raft of print ads which highlight the hugely positive reception the Virgin Media: TiVo Service has enjoyed since it launched in December 2010. The campaign continues on Saturday with Marc Warren featuring in three 30-second TV spots, exploring the TiVo service’s simple solutions to the increasingly complex choices facing viewers today. Set against a clean, white backdrop, Marc is faced with a carousel of spinning TVs, catapulted screens and falling TVs, before demonstrating the TiVo service’s ability to search through a wide choice of programmes to find your favourite shows quicker than ever; avoiding clashes by recording three shows whilst watching a fourth; and making sure you never miss the start of your favourite series by setting a WishList^TM, providing the viewer with the ultimate control of their TV.

Nigel Gilbert, chief marketing officer, Virgin Media, said: “Virgin Media is leading a much-anticipated revolution in the way people enjoy their favourite shows and our new advertising campaign is focused simply on the great stuff on offer from our new TiVo box. We know the features and functions our customers have already fallen in love with and are making the most of a fully integrated campaign to cut through the noise and highlight these stand-out attributes. We’re inviting people to take a look at our brilliant new service and interact with TiVo’s iconic ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ buttons online to discover even more.”

Guy Bradbury, creative director at DDB UK said “We’ve developed a campaign with the necessary depth for Virgin Media’s new TiVo service. The campaign sign-off of ‘We think it’s the best way to watch TV, but what do you think?’ invites the audience to interact with the campaign, showing the confidence Virgin Media has to engage with consumers which comes from the game changing nature of the Virgin Media: TiVo Service itself.”

From Saturday, Virgin Media’s campaign will invite people to visit www.virginmedia.com/tivo to explore an interactive video journey and discover more of the TiVo service’s next generation features for themselves. From a 1TB hard drive, able to record up to 500 hours of content, the ability to scroll back in time and through the past seven days on the EPG and the ability to rate shows with thumbs up and thumbs down buttons and receive recommendations based on a viewer’s preferences, visitors to www.virginmedia.com/tivo can interact with the site and give their favourite Virgin Media: TiVo Service feature a big thumbs up.