The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Taylor Herring The Drum Awards The Drum Marketing Awards

The Drum Marketing Awards: Taylor Herring talks about its winning Samsung campaign

Author

By Dani Gibson, Senior Writer

January 15, 2019 | 5 min read

When promoting domestic appliances, like washing machines, it can prove difficult to stand out among a sea of white goods.

That is why Taylor Herring decided to shake it up a bit with a campaign for Samsung that featured original research, a disruptive TV spot, a feature film, one of Britain’s greatest composers and a very smart washing machine.

Ahead of the deadline for The Drum Marketing Awards 2019, The Drum spoke to 2018’s Grand Prix winner, Taylor Herring's chief creative officer and managing partner Peter Mount Stevens, on the ins and outs of ‘Spin Cycle’.

The Drum: How did this campaign come about?

Peter Mountstevens: We’ve been working with Samsung as a creative agency for a few years now across a wide range of projects ranging from new product launches to brand campaigns - in this case, we won the work following a competitive pitch process against their core creative agencies.

Samsung is an exciting client for us, as a brand it is more interested in ideas and less interested in the platform or specialism of the agency pitching the creative. As such, we often find ourselves pitching against agencies from all areas of the marketing mix including the big advertising shops and this has provided us with some great opportunities to expand our skillset as a core PR specialist.

TD: This was your first in-house TV ad, what have you learned from this and how has it impacted Taylor Herring’s delivery since?

PM: This was indeed our first in-house ad and it was an exciting prospect for us an agency.

I think our lack of TV specific experience was a distinct advantage in the sense that we didn’t have anyone behind us, telling us what we could and couldn’t do, and so this was very liberating from a creative point of view. This said, in recent year’s we have produced a huge amount of video content so the prospect of making a newsworthy TV spot which could sit within the Samsung canon was well within our capabilities.

In terms of how it has affected our delivery - we launched our own in house production company St Marks Studios a few months before the QuickDrive brief and the acclaim the work has received has helped the business go from strength to strength.

TD: How has this campaign helped your relationship with Samsung?

PM: The success of the campaign validated the huge amount of trust Samsung placed in us to deliver the work in the first instance.

The old adage - you are only ever as good as your client is true of course and the QuickDrive campaign cut through the noise because Samsung were willing to be brave and take some risks.

The recognition we have received via awards has helped to strengthen the relationship and this has led to more work including a global ATL campaign we created to launch the new range of QLED TV’s in the spring which included further TV spots, ambient executions, creative out of home, news generation and cinema ads.

TD: What has been the impact of the TV ad?

PM: The net impact was that Samsung sold more washing machines.

As for the wider impact, who knows? I would like to think the work could result in a renewed focus on ‘earned first’ as a viable marketing strategy – putting ideas which can penetrate the news agenda and travel organically at scale at the heart of the marketing mix.

TD: Spin Cycle won many awards, including the Grand Prix at The Drum Marketing Awards, how has winning benefited Taylor Herring?

PM: Winning the Grand Prix has been huge for us – it has helped to shift perception of the agency from a niche PR specialist to a fully integrated ‘best in class’ creative shop with a wide ranging skillset

TD: How has it impacted the team and business?

PM: The success of the QuickDrive campaign has been a real calling card for the agency and sits alongside our other highly awarded work for the likes of Greggs and easyjet. The net result is that we are winning more business and executing on work which spans the entire marcomms spectrum from PR campaigns to events, COOH to TV and everything in between.

It’s an exciting time for us as an agency and the broad mix of work continues to keep it interesting for the entire team as we move into 2019 and beyond.

The Drum Marketing Awards are celebrating over 10 years of recognising the best marketers and campaigns in the industry.

These awards are open to enter. Make sure you download your entry pack and submit your entries before 1 February for the chance to take home the coveted Grand Prix.

Taylor Herring The Drum Awards The Drum Marketing Awards

More from Taylor Herring

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +