What it had to solve
Challenge the image of Calor gas as BBQ canisters and make off-grid households reconsider oil, whose large tanks and run-dry moments are the category's weak points.
The idea
A know-it-all who irritates his village turns out to heat with oil — so the real 'clever Richards' are the ones with an underground Calor tank.
How it works
Two lead TV films shot by Matt Huntley (Burger) and narrated by Tom Baker introduce Clever Dick among English village quirks; the campaign ran as VOD, radio, print and online, with Sky ADSmart targeting the TV to specific off-grid postcodes so rural oil users actually saw it.
What it did
No results in the source; the campaign launched across TV, VOD, radio, print and online in October 2016, with the postcode targeting meaning most rural oil-heated homes saw it.
Background
If you hear 'Calor gas' and think canisters and BBQs, you are, the brand admitted, not alone: not enough people knew Calor sells home central heating. Of the two million people living off the gas grid, oil was still the dominant way to heat the home — with large unsightly tanks in the garden and the possibility of running out at inopportune moments. Calor's 'Clever Choice' campaign by MullenLowe London set out to tell those households they have a choice.
The campaign's device is character comedy. In two lead TV films shot by Matt Huntley of Burger and set in the English countryside, narrator Tom Baker introduces Clever Dick, a know-it-all who irritates fellow villagers with his marrow-growing prowess and general smugness — until they discover he is not using Calor to heat his home. The punchline, from executive creative director Richard Denney: 'when it comes to off-grid heating, the people who choose Calor are the real clever Richards.'
Media worked as hard as the joke: Calor used Sky's ADSmart tool to target the TV buy at specific off-grid postcodes, so the majority of rural oil users saw the commercials, with the campaign extending across VOD, radio, print and online. Head of marketing Andy Brotherton wanted to 'challenge the norm and disrupt the thinking of off-grid customers when it comes to choosing their central heating system'.
Why it lands
Category invisibility: the brand was read as BBQ canisters, not a central-heating option.
Oil's pain points — unsightly tanks, running dry at the worst moment — are inherently dramatic and easy to parody.
Rural self-deprecating humour earns attention from an audience that distrusts city-slick marketing.
ADSmart postcode targeting kept the media spend on the households the offer actually applies to.
What you can take
Comedy plus postcode-level media: a joke about rural life lands hardest on the exact households that live it, and ADSmart made sure they — not cities — paid attention to it.
Since then
The source, from the October 2016 launch, records no audience, switching or sales figures for the campaign.
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