A tongue-in-cheek drama revolving around a day of reckoning when a woman realises her man has been buying lookalikes instead of real Magnums has won the latest Thinkboxes award for TV creativity.
“He bought fake Magnum. What else has been fake in this relationship?” the voiceover asks at the start of the humorous spot.
The commercial was made for multiple markets at a time when sales of own label alternatives have been growing due to the cost-of-living crisis.
The result is witty, universally engaging, and totally on brand. “TV is key for us for driving awareness and reach,” Magnum’s global vice president Ben Curtis explains.
“Although we buy a full suite of media that complement each other, TV plays a special role in a campaign like this to land the drama of the creative idea. At the end of the day, people watch TV for drama and entertainment – and that’s exactly what this idea is.”
The starting point for the campaign was a discussion about growing competition from rival brands and retailers, and how best Magnum, as category leader, should respond.
“It was a tricky brief because we didn’t want to come across as defensive, petty or arrogant, so getting the tone right was critical,” says Lola MullenLowe managing director Tom Elliston.
“We also looked deep into what consumers were saying and there was a common thread running through everything that showed that, while others might try to be like a Magnum, they are still definitely not a Magnum.”
“Like a Magnum is not a Magnum” then became the one-line brief that all involved worked to.
Simple insights from first-hand experience of having previously been offered a lookalike gave the creative team ample scope to play around with the idea and have some fun, says Tomas Ostiglia, Lola MullenLowe’s executive creative director.
“We got thinking: what if faking a simple thing like an ice cream could escalate into faking something else, to faking something much bigger and become a crazy melodrama,” he says.
Intended as a TV campaign from the get-go, humour and tone of voice needed to be understood and appreciated in different cultures, however.
Care was also needed to strike the right balance between tone of voice for the brand established over years, and humour – not a space in which Magnum had previously widely played. This made working with the right director especially important.
Happily, the brand and agency already had a strong working relationship with one of Scandinavia’s most awarded and respected directors, Martin Werner.
“Martin Werner and the team at Proppa/Bacon are part of the Magnum family and we have been working with them for many years on all major campaigns” Curtis says. “He knows the brand inside out.
“Working with Martin on this campaign was really important to ensure that we could remain in the Magnum world while telling a humorous and dramatic story.”
Casting was key too – for the male lead especially, Ostiglia reveals, because the man needed to be someone the audience could laugh at and empathise with, despite being outed as a fraud, and without coming across as creepy.
The comedic twist – when he is outed, the woman tears off his fake moustache – was added for the same reason and proved itself in the edit as a key vignette in delivering the comedy punchline.
It was also in post-production that the music evolved.
“The track we selected and loved is from Vivaldi and is more than 100 years old. However, we felt that maybe we could do an extra something to further dial up the drama and comedy while making the story even sharper” Ostiglia says.
“That’s when we decided to have the repetition and build-up of the word ‘Fake’ integrated into the track and played throughout the film which we recorded at Abbey Road Studios. We think it really adds a lot.”
Launched in the UK at the beginning of January, “Stick to the original” is part of a wider campaign that also included outdoor and shorter, digital formats linked to the ecommerce platform.
The results have been good. “It was received incredibly well,” Elliston says. People really did notice and talk about it because it was completely unexpected, not only from the brand, but also from the category. The comedy of the story-telling was loved and the truth of the insight really resonated.
“It clearly made waves as the competition responded with their own spoofs of the outdoor and ‘Stick to the original’ campaign line, which actually probably did more good for Magnum than it did for them.”
Curtis says the drama, the music, and the gag with the moustache are his favourite elements. “This is the first time that the brand has used comedy, and it opens a beautiful door to future possibilities,” he notes.
Magnum had done nothing like “Stick to the original” before, which made it a brave idea. Even so, any potential risk was mitigated by a client with a clear idea of what they wanted and liked, and a longstanding relationship with a world class director.
“When you have a good feeling for an idea, trust your instinct, take the risks and just make it happen,” Ostiglia says, sharing his top tip for getting an idea from script to screen. “And finally, flip problems like competitive threat on their head to work to your advantage.”
Second in the January/February Thinkboxes was "Not letting go” by House of Oddities for NSPCC. “Savings Watch: Good way to bank” by New Commercial Arts for Nationwide was third.
Also shortlisted were “Steal the show – Courtroom drama” by Mother London for Gousto and “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” by Specsavers Creative for Specsavers.
WINNING AD
Agency: Lola MullenLowe
Creative team: Tomas Ostiglia, Jorge Zacher, Kevin Cabuli, Pedro Mezzini, Augusto Callegari
Client: Magnum/Unilever
Production company: Proppa/Bacon
Director: Martin Werner
The Thinkboxes, in association with Campaign, are the only bi-monthly awards that celebrate the UK’s world-beating TV ad creativity, in all its forms. They are judged by the Thinkbox Academy – advertising and marketing luminaries who have been involved in award-winning creative work for TV.
Want to see more great work? Head to the Thinkbox hub
Thinkbox is the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, in all its forms. Its shareholders are Channel 4, ITV, Sky Media and UKTV. Thinkbox works with the marketing community with a single ambition: to help advertisers get the best out of today’s TV.
