Moneysupermarket’s brand boss teases: You’ve not seen the last of strutting Dave or pole-dancing Colin
Moneysupermarket is planning to bring back ‘Epic-strut’ Dave – the frontman of what was dubbed the funniest advert of 2015 – for a campaign which will launch later this year. In the campaign Dave will be joined by Colin, the pole-dancing builder who gripped the nation in the second ad of the series with his erotic performance in a construction site.
Both characters have proven hugely successful for the financial service’s brand, with the ‘Epic’ campaign’s popularity helping to drive an 18 per cent rise in revenue for the first half of 2015.
Brand marketing director Miranda Roe revealed that the advertising push resulted in brand consideration shooting up four percentage points which “for a company of [its] scale is huge”.
In bringing Colin and Dave into one campaign, Moneysupermarket will be hoping to emulate this success as it plots its strategy to drive growth in the competitive category for the coming year following a £100m financing round.
Roe spoke to The Drum as the latest advert in the series - Epic Wolf - rolled out last week, saying she hopes it will prove as popular as the previous two spots.
The insight behind the work – created by ad agency Mother – is to bring to life the feeling that people get when they are managing their money effectively.
“People find managing their money is something that’s it quite fragmented, quite complicated and unrewarding […] so we wanted to make them feel confident by dramatising how epic you feel when you’re on top of your game with your money,” explained Roe.
The campaign's characters have resonated so well with audiences that ‘Epic Strut’ was dubbed the funniest advert of 2015 and featured in Charlie Brooker’s 2015 Wipe on the BBC at the end of the year.
In another coup for the brand, The Sun leant on Dave’s popularity by superimposing chancellor George Osbourne’s head on the hot-pant adorned body in a front page story about the government’s budget.
Since then, Epic Strut has been viewed over 2.5 million times on YouTube.
“Dave was a really tough act to follow. But what we found when we launched Colin was that he actually appealed to people more than Dave did. It was a different type of character. And we hope with Epic Wolf we’ll really capture people’s imagination and people will emulate the moves in the same way they did with Epic Strut.”
However, the challenge Moneysupermarket faces in bringing back Dave and Colin is to ensure audiences don’t tire of the format. By only releasing three ads in the series over the past year, Roe argued that Moneysupermarket has struck the right balance between keeping people interested and not wearing thin the idea.
“The balance we need to strike is how to capture great ideas, execute them brilliantly, but not saturate the market or overplay an idea,” she said. “The danger with advertising is that some marketers can get carried away and want to make lots and lots of things, whereas it’s better to do what you do brilliantly.”
Roe was unable to reveal anymore details about the upcoming campaign, urging audienced to stay tuned.