Tennent's marketing manager discusses new campaign

The brief was to essentially tell the story of the irrepressible Hugh Tennent. The brand has got a powerful positioning and when we realised that we were coming into our 125th year, we started to look back at the historical time-line and just found this incredible story of this spirited, inventive, ambitious young man who had, against all odds, started off the brand and we thought that it was a fantastic story to tell in a way that only Tennent’s can.

Does it seem strange to you that the brand has never concentrated on Hugh Tennent's story before?

I’m not sure why it’s not been told before. It’s obviously well-known within the walls of Wellpark. I’m not sure why it hasn’t been told before now but I think it’s great that we’re telling it now. We’ve researched it with our target consumers and they were really switched on by the story, the fact that he was only 22 when he had this ‘Madman’s Dream’ as the media called it.

What was your reaction to the way that the story was to be portrayed? It’s quite a comedic play on Tennent’s story.

The guys had initially developed about eight creative routes from the heart wrenching through to fantasy and ‘Madman’s Dream’ really stood out because we hadn’t touched on it before and we wanted to tell it in a way that only Tennent’s can by bringing him to life as a slightly eccentric young man who has a great spirit. It seemed like the right thing to do. It’s also a creative idea that has huge stretch and you don’t really come across them very often. It works across music, football, products. It can work across everything. It’s fantastic.

With three ads already in the can, is this a creative idea that you think will look to continue afterwards?

We’re guided by consumer feedback, so obviously if consumers love the campaign as much as we do then yes, I think it would be great to have Hugh front and centre of the Tennent’s campaign for the foreseeable future. It’s good to get the story out there for Scotland too.

How will the campaign be supported?

We have posters coming out in a few weeks and the online kicks-in from Monday as well. It’s a very heavy weight campaign across all media.

What will the online strategy be?

That will be predominantly focused on bringing people back to the Tennent’s website to watch the ad, initially.

What else can we expect to see from the campaign? Will is run across radio too?

We’ve not looked at radio. As the campaign progresses then maybe, but it’s very visual, it’s visually very rich. We have some great posters coming out, and the online is very reflective of the campaign creative and obviously it will be played out in cinema too which is a great format for ‘Madman’s Dream’ which is hugely cinematic I think. Daniel Kleinman directed it which was fantastic. His production company Rattling Sticks produced the campaign along with Newhaven. That was a great coup to get a director of caliber interested in working with us on this.

What was it that attracted him to work on the campaign?

He loved the story and I think he was quite captured by it and there were lots of interesting elements to it. He has this great ability to work with CGI on big scale productions but if you look at the stuff he’s done on John Smith’s with Peter Kay, he’s really good at comedy as well and those scripts have a combination of both. He was fantastic. Very understated, very creative and a really nice guy.

How do you hope this positions Tennent’s in the consumer’s mind?

For a brand that is so well known and so engrained in Scottish culture, people think that they know everything there is to know about Tennent’s and I hope that this makes people reappraise it and make them think about the brand a bit differently and enjoy the advertising.

Why has the brand been away from TV for the period that it has? The brand has been well known in the past for its TV marketing, why did it disappear for a few years?

We’ve been focusing on T in the Park and football and the brand has been doing other things but it’s great that we’re now back on TV.