The Challenge

The communications challenge for John Smiths is to be dominant. In 2002 it wanted to create a sense of ubiquity by ensuring that everyone knew about the brand, remembered the advertising and had John Smith’s on their mental shopping lists.

The challenge was to do this and make the brand more attractive to young drinkers without alienating existing older customers. Success would also help secure broader distribution.

Research of the target market revealed that TV would be the perfect medium for the campaign as only 4% of them never watched TV. Only magazines scored in the same ballpark.

The TV Solution

TV’s ability to connect with a young male target market and its reach helped secure 93% of the budget with radio taking 5% and press 2%.

TBWA lined up comedian Peter Kay to star in a series of humorous situations, such as scaring his daughter or booting the football off the park to bring the No Nonsense franchise of John Smith’s to life.

To maximise the effectiveness of the campaign MediaVest and Scottish Courage focused activity in and around sports programming on terrestrial channels and Sky’s Sports channels. Events included Cricket – India vs England – on Channel 4 as well as the football World Cup and Grand Prix on ITV 1.

Sport not only indexed highly against current John Smith’s drinkers but also fitted in with the lifestyle of potential customers – lager drinkers with a ‘No Nonsense’ attitude to life. By focusing the budget in one area it also boosted the brand’s share of voice.

TV took more than 90% of the budget during the campaign but was backed up with radio, particularly TalkSport and press such as The Sun, the Observer, Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail and FHM.

The Results

Tracking studies by Millward Brown showed John Smith’s as a ‘humorous and down to earth brand’. This was reinforced and built up during the four month campaign, peaking at 60%.

The Peter Kay campaign created massive awareness and successfully communicated the ‘No Nonsense’ nature of the John Smiths brand. The TV commercials were talked about in pubs and offices across the country with up to 69% of 25-49-year-old men saying they would talk about the activity.