Media agency Bountiful Cow has introduced a new brand consultancy, offering specialised services to address the full spectrum of growth challenges facing brands today. Named BC2, the brand consultancy is focused squarely on ‘unlocking future growth’ for clients. BC2 counts as its specialisms the development of new brands, refreshing propositions for existing brands, and using data, insight and analytics to identify new growth opportunities for mature brands. The new BC2 team will be led by Bountiful Cow’s Chief Strategy Officer Chetan Murthy and includes Planning Partner Oliver Clarke, Planning Director Liz Turgut, and Head of Insight and Effectiveness Sam Barton.
B2B PR and marketing agency, The Think Tank, has joined forces with V-Tex, an innovative, environmentally-focused drinks chilling solution, to drive sustainability in the UK hospitality, retail, food and beverage and events industries. The Think Tank’s campaign is full of tasty ideas that will showcase this first-of-its-kind product to entice B2B customers, both on and off trade, raising awareness of and educating them on V-Tex’s remarkable environmental benefits. PR and media relations will build the brand profile as a pioneering drinks-chilling brand when it comes to innovating for convenience, greater margins and carbon reduction.
Medialab, the independent media agency, has been appointed by Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group, as its UK media agency. Medialab brings its wide and increasing range of innovative products and services to further Standard Life’s ambition to support people’s financial futures. Together, Medialab and SunLife have built a strong partnership, delivering sizable media buying efficiencies, strong business growth in 2020 – despite the impact of Covid – and launching several new SunLife products. Medialab will look to replicate this success by elevating Standard Life’s new brand platform, ‘Everyone deserves a life more certain’. With a multi-million pound budget, Medialab will deliver integrated multi-channel activity across TV, radio, out-of-home advertising and partnerships to support the brand. This will be implemented alongside an array of digital and print media, aiming to position Standard Life as the number one retirement brand in the UK. All media activity will be planned, modelled and reported through Medialab’s proprietary marketing intelligence platform, Apollo.
Specsavers has renewed its media contract with Manning Gottlieb OMD and OMD Ireland without conducting a competitive pitch, building on its 11-year relationship with the Omnicom agencies. The process was a pioneering move that reflects its commitment to the IPA & ISBA Pitch Positive Pledge, of which Specsavers was one of the first signatories. The decision to conduct a review process rather than a pitch shines a light on the positive relationship between Specsavers, Manning Gottlieb OMD and OMD Ireland with the organisations commitment to the ongoing partnership, which began 11 years ago and has been renewed for another three years. The review looked at four key areas: Team, talent and structure; Effectiveness and measurement; Account management and ways of working; Integrated system; and Commercials and transparency. Working with consultants at The Aperto Partnership and Media Marketing Compliance, they conducted a full review of the current contract and working relationship to ensure Specsavers remains at the forefront of an ever-evolving media landscape; has the best talent on its business; delivers best-in-market effectiveness remaining commercially competitive and transparent; and continues to deliver best in class creative media solutions by Manning Gottlieb OMD and OMD Ireland.
VCCP Group, the global challenger network for challenger brands, has announced the expansion of its Digital & Innovation company, Bernadette, into its office in Prague, Czechia. The move forms part of its ambition to grow its presence globally following its highly successful launch in early 2022. The Bernadette team is made up of real digital experts and specialists combining designers, architects, developers, strategists and makers. Using creativity and collaboration to unlock innovation for clients. Over the last 18 months the agency has produced award-winning work in the UK for fabric of the nation brands such as Cadbury, easyJet and O2 amongst others. The agency will now bring this offering to the Czech market, integrating with an existing digital production team. Led by renowned practitioner Martin Mikyška, Bernadette Prague will focus on innovative design and developing digital experiences, products and campaigns for local clients as well as serving as a development hub for Bernadette’s HQ in London.
McCann London has launched the next phase of the See My Pain platform with one of the UK’s leading pain brands, Nurofen. With a fifth of women (20%) wanting more resources to aid better conversations between women and their healthcare professionals, Nurofen has launched the Pain Pass, a free downloadable PDF to help people track and articulate their pain and symptoms, aid more constructive conversations with their healthcare professional, and help tackle unconscious bias. McCann London has created the Pain Pass digital tool, fronted by a simple acronym (PASS) to help women know what to do in the face of bias: P (pause the conversation) A (ask questions for clarity) S (speak up) S (seek another opinion). The Pain Pass, created in collaboration with Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) and real women, is now available to download via Nurofen’s See My Pain website. It includes a pain scale to help women and doctors understand the severity of the pain women face, pain vocabulary to help women find the right words to accurately express their pain, a calendar for women to track their pain, and tips to boost women’s confidence and help them to advocate for themselves in their interactions with HCPs. Steered by McCann London’s Creative Director, Ruth Boulter, McCann Worldgroup’s Ambition Collective, an initiative aimed at creating more opportunities for all-women creatives in the industry, played a critical role in the creation of the PASS acronym. The Pain Pass was launched at a two-day immersive exhibition. The See My Pain Exhibition was a unique experience exposing the bias many women face when seeking help and a diagnosis for their pain. The exhibition, which spotlighted 13 new dismissal packs, was a thought-provoking maze-like takeover exposing the reality of some women’s journey to a successful pain diagnosis and treatment. At the exclusive launch night, Nurofen introduced the Pain Pass alongside its second Gender Pain Gap Index Report, steered by IPG agency Golin, showing the current state of the Gender Pain Gap in the UK. The evening was well attended by charities, HCPs and Members of Parliament including guest speakers Jess Phillips, MP, Claire Cohen (journalist) & Dr Marieke Bigg, sociologist and author of ‘This Won’t Hurt: How Medicine Fails Women’. The Pain Pass is supported by a full creative campaign. The hero See My Pain 30” film, spotlighting the stories of five women, is now live across TV, digital and social promoting the digital tool alongside the PASS acronym for women to remember. IPG agency Golin spearheaded the Gender Pain Gap Report research.
Deliveroo has revealed its latest Christmas campaign, ‘Anything Goes’ for the 2023 festive season. The campaign celebrates that at this time of year, our behaviour around food changes right the way through to Christmas as we enjoy our own festive food rituals. The campaign is built off the insight that in the run-up to Christmas, we let go of our inhibitions in favour of the weird and wonderful food traditions we’ve built around the festive period. “Mince pie for breakfast? Go on, it’s Christmas!” Written by Charlie Gee & Tian Murphy, Creative Directors at Pablo, the campaign is built from extensive research into the lives of Deliveroo customers during the festive period. Informed by insights collected from social listening, order data and customer research – the campaign celebrates putting brussel sprouts on your pizza, pouring gravy on anything, or that Cantonese feast enjoyed as a family on Christmas Eve. Summed up in the hero 30” TV spot; ‘The rules are, there are no rules.’ ‘Anything Goes’ is a continuation of the launch of the new Deliveroo brand platform created with Pablo, “It’s all on your doorstep”, in which the delivery app continued its partnership with Director duo Watts and production house Stink. The campaign utilises mixed media using a 2D animation style built for Deliveroo in partnership with Studio Orca, with sound handled by Jungle Studios and Post-production by Rascal.
Art Fund and Pablo have teamed up with creative tech specialists at The Mil Experience to create innovative technology that shows the amazing impact art and culture has on the brain. They used headsets to record people’s brainwaves as they visited galleries and museums and converted those brainwaves into beautiful live visuals, to demonstrate what their brains were doing at that exact moment. And the effects are quite extraordinary. Evidence suggests that looking and at art raises dopamine levels in the body and elicits a response similar to falling in love. It’s so much more than just pretty pictures; art actually shapes and changes your mind. The activity is part of a new campaign for Art Fund, aimed at showing the value of art and the benefits of visiting museums and galleries with a National Art Pass, a membership card which offers discounts across UK museums and galleries. The nation’s art-going habits have yet to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, and with increasing pressure on people’s wallets from the cost of living, Art Fund and Pablo needed to find a new and innovative way to demonstrate the value of art. The campaign launched with an event at The Courtauld Gallery, where press and members of the public had the opportunity to wear the headsets as they looked at world-renowned artworks. Their brainwaves were visualised in real-time on a screen and at the end of the experience, they were able to take home a bespoke film of their own brainwaves. There are plans to take the event on tour to select museums in 2024, so people all across the UK can try the headsets and experience the power of art and culture for themselves. The events are accompanied by a film, directed by Dan Emmerson produced by Somesuch, which documents Model and Mental-Health Activist Adwoa Aboah trialing the headset at various cultural venues, including London’s Science Museum and the newly renovated Young V&A.
