The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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By Michael Feeley | Founder and chief exec

September 22, 2015 | 3 min read

Calm.com, a website and app designed to encourage people to meditate and relax, has launched a new two-minute ‘slow TV’ ad, thought to be the first of its kind in the world, in association with All Media Response (ARM).

Calm is the brainchild of Alex Tew, creator of the Million Dollar Homepage and Michael Acton Smith, the founder of Mind Candy and creator of Moshi Monsters. The Calm app, available for iPhone and Android, has had two million downloads to date.

In May this year, Calm was announced as the winner of All Response Media’s inaugural ‘TV Star’ competition, an initiative which sought out the UK’s next big TV advertiser, with the winner receiving an allocated prize fund to launch onto TV.

Acton Smith said: “We were delighted to win TV Star and love working with ARM. We hope this is the start of a long partnership between us. The world is becoming an increasingly noisy place and sometimes whispering can be more effective than shouting. No one has ever created an ad quite like this and we hope viewers will enjoy this rare moment of calm.”

The two minute ad, which was developed by creative agency Dancing Aardvarks, will run alongside a suite of 30 second versions. It builds on the recent ‘Slow TV’ phenomenon and includes no voiceover or much in the form of action. The viewer is simply taken through five relaxing scenes, incluiding a mountain view, waves crashing onto a beach and rainfall in a forest with only the calming natural sounds of those scenes as audio.

Colin Gillespie, chief strategy officer of ARM, said: “Choosing Calm as our TV Star winner was an easy decision and we are so happy to be working with true digital pioneers in Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew, but more so in a category that blends genuine consumer health benefits pivoted through the power of mobile. Never before has a brand delivered the product to the consumer through the TV ad itself, so that you get to try before you buy”.

All Response Media are no strangers to launching brands on TV, having worked previously with names such as giffgaff, Made.com, 888.com, WeBuyAnyCar.com, Graze and LoveFilm. More recently, ARM masterminded the line launch of Thunderhead, a cloud-based Customer Engagement platform, with two-minute ads broadcast during the final series of Mad Men on Sky Atlantic.

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All Response Media

All Response Media is Europe's leading customer acquisition focused performance media agency. With extensive experience of applying data-driven decision making to drive planning and buying of TV, digital and other media as effective channels to ignite our clients' businesses and drive rapid growth.

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