ABOUT

The Brief: Our brief was attractively wide open. Coming out of the last few tumultuous years, we were asked to create a robust, multi-channel campaign that looked towards a brighter future. Launching on January 1st 2023 and riding the ‘New Year - New You’ feeling of positivity, the mission was to communicate Reed’s brand message as optimistic, diverse, vibrant and self-empowering. The client’s one specification was to centre their established tagline, ‘Love Mondays’.

Concept: The objective of the project was to continue to develop Reed’s ‘Love Mondays’ tagline. Typically seen as the last day worthy of love, the tagline’s potency lies in the tension between its two words. Its message: with the right job, you don’t have to dread Mondays.

With this in mind, we decided to develop these two words into a song. An unashamedly earnest, upbeat song-and-dance number to encapsulate the emotional direction the client had laid out for us. We wanted to create a stylised dream-world of Monday morning positivity - with just the right amount of knowing humour - to present and magnify the internal experience of someone who has found the right job for them.

Execution: Taking aesthetic cues from the technicolor musicals of the 50s and 60s, we wanted to tap into the unbridled joy synonymous with classics like ‘Singin in the Rain’ or ‘The Young Girls of Rochefort’. Colourful coherence in costume and set design are imperative to achieving this look. Musically, we aimed for something more universal in genre - a friendly pop-rock, jingle-tastic track - our goal was catchiness above all else!

We aimed to be as faithful to the mid-century aesthetic as possible, building the ad around an ambitious master crane shot for the group choreography section. We also used vintage anamorphic lenses for the majority of the piece - switching to contemporary spherical lenses when our protagonist lands back in the ‘real world’.

We knew we wanted to feature a large and diverse cast to best represent the wide range of demographics that Reed services - and the process of casting and rehearsing our Monday-loving troupe was an absolute delight.

We took key characters from the TVC and utilised them as a diverse group of Monday lovers for the out-of-home campaign. 10 characters in total - to be released throughout the year. Bombastic poses make up the core of the photographic campaign and having access to a marvellous of dancers made this a pleasure to shoot.

Further expanding the reach of the campaign, we produced two radio ads. The first features the song in its original form - followed up by a version that features people in the ‘real world’ singing the song to themselves as they make their way to work, or while working at the job they love.
Mixing together voices of all kinds and abilities, the ad presents a diverse cast of characters who cannot get the song, or its message, out of their heads.

Results: With 8000+ TV spots in January and February 2023, on everything from hit Saturday night shows like ‘Dancing on Ice’ and ‘The Masked Singer’, network movie premieres and FA Cup & Premier League football - the campaign increased year-on-year applications by 63% in its first week.

Over 2 million people saw the 40 second ‘director’s cut’ of the advert exclusively before Marvel’s ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ - the film with the biggest opening weekend so far in 2023.

The multiple characters of the outdoor campaign were plastered across the UK - with over 18,000 ads running on trains, buses, stations and roadside in more than 35 cities.

Over 20 million people were reached via audio ads on Capital, Capital Xtra, Kiss and Heart, as well as Spotify and audio adverts on some of the UK’s biggest podcasts

Project Credits:
Client: Reed Global
Agency: Nice Productions
Director: Gregory Nice
Creative Director: Jack Stanton

TVC
Directors: Gregory Nice & Jack Stanton
Choreographer: Johnny White
DOP: Annika Summerson
Music: Jack Stanton & Dom Kirtley
Executive Producer: Gregory Nice
Producer: Lucy Vince
Production Manager: Ella Taylor-Palfrey
Production Coordinator: John Mouratis
1st AD: Freddie Wright
Gaffer: Lee Parfitt
Art Director: Fred Alsopp
Costume Designer: Katherine Aspinall
Makeup Artist: Jess Kell
Grade: Jateen Patel
Sound design: Dom Kirtely


OOH
Producer: Gregory Nice
Photographer: Michelle Beatty
Retouch: Simon Kivela
Designer: Jack Stanton


RADIO
Producer: Gregory Nice & Jack Stanton
Director: Jack Stanton
Composition: Dom Kirtley & Jack Stanton
Audio Production: Dom Kirtley
Sound design: Dom Kirtley