Laughing in the face of danger

A campaign foccussed on the fact that the celebrities have such a lovely time together that they don’t even notice the danger.

Justice called, the wrong man answered.

This is a campaign that I wrote, led the creative on, directed and edited for the launch of Judge Romesh on Dave.

I wrote and directed four different versions of the launch promo, each with a different joke about his lack of legal knowledge.

Big Zuu’s Big Eats is back and bigger than ever.

We celebrated Zuu’s stratospheric rise to megastardom with this fast paced auto-biographical (with some slight exaggerations) launch promo.

Comedy for the brain.

A campaign that I wrote, led the creative on, directed and edited for the launch of Comedians Giving Lectures on Dave.

Jon and Lucy couldn’t agree on what to say, so they wrote each other’s scripts.

A campaign that I wrote, directed and edited to launch Series 3 of Meet the Richardsons on Dave.

The main promo won bronze at Promax UK 2022 in the Best Scripted Comedy category.

Original comedy, done differently

Over the course of a few months, I directed these interview shoots with 11 of the UK’s best known comedians/comedy actors where we had a nice fun chat about the shows they make on Dave.

I knew after about 2 interviews that the spot would have a ‘laughter section’ where we name check each programme title in the spot, and that I would need to provoke laughter out of each of them during the remaining interviews, which meant keeping my ears peeled for when I could sneak something funny in to catch them off guard. Which was easier with some of the talent than others.

The end result was a fun brand piece where our talent talked about their shows on Dave in the way that Dave would talk about the shows on Dave, a way that isn’t trying to sell the shows to you, but more playful, relaxed and not try hard. And all while allowing me to have chats with some real UK comedy heavyweights, which was an absolute privilege.

One Gorman, three guests, no fireworks

A Campaign that I led the creative on, directed and edited for Dave

The brief I was given for this project was “Dave Gorman isn’t alone in finding the modern world baffling”

This new series saw Dave G bring some comedy guests into his world to analyse and play games based on the obscurities of the modern world.

We decided the best way to make a campaign would be to have Mr. Gorman question every element of it. An originated promo that questions originated promos. An eye catching digital OOH ad with fireworks that questions the fireworks, we even created smart radio ads and in a world media first put Dave Gorman’s voice inside people’s Alexa’s to read you his picks from the TV guide… And question what on earth he’s doing in an Alexa.

When I took on this project, I never expected that it, a promo celebrating the anniversary of England’s 1966 World Cup win would be one of my, a proud Scot’s favourite ever shoots!

I wrote, directed and edited this spot starring Ray Winstone to promote England v Germany: The Legends on Channel 5.

I found out 24 hours before this shoot, that I might be able to grab an hour with renowned movie star Ray Winstone at the old Upton Park ground the following day with a budget of £0. Ray was already there shooting VT’s for the programme and the crew were kind enough to let us piggy back on their time.

At that point he was only the ‘assistant manager’ to the England Legends charity football team, he ultimately took over as manager when Harry Redknapp pulled out closer to the date.

Either way, my idea centred around his team talk to motivate the comedians, retired footballers, boxers and actors playing for the England Legends. He was a lot of fun to work with, a genuinely lovely man and he gave a smashing performance. And we did it all in under an hour.

For the biggest, tastiest cooking and comedy series, just add a bit of Dave.

I wrote, directed and led the creative across this campaign to launch Big Zuu’s Big Eats Series 3.

With Big Zuu’s Big Eats Series 1 and 2 launching in various lockdowns in 2020/2021, this was our first chance to shoot something with Big Zuu. So I wrote this ad which is aligned with Dave’s Q1 brand creative “Add a bit of Dave”.

A marriage of comedians.

I wrote, directed and edited this series of spots to launch Meet the Richardsons on Dave.

We launched Meet the Richardsons with a series of contextual spots to be placed in the ad breaks of shows like Hunted, Saturday Night Takeaway, SAS: Who Dares Wins, Hypothetical, The Wedding Fixer and Sandylands to name a few.

I wrote bespoke 20” scripts for each that Jon and Lucy in some cases read as they were, or in others, improvised around.

Something I made for AMC.

Awards

Promax Europe 2018 - Best work never seen | Silver

Promax Global 2018 - Best work never seen | Gold

Dave’s big brand campaign for 2021.

I led this creative route all the way from conception and pitching through execution and delivery.

The goal was to show people’s changing perceptions of Dave, from “Top Gear repeats channel” to home of original comedy, but to do that in Dave’s tone of voice.

This creative sat across the brand for 10 months and features on each of the individual series launches for the shows Unforgivable, Hypothetical and Meet the Richardsons. This creative idea was then evolved for Q2 on Dave with new series launches Sliced and Big Zuu’s Big Eats sitting underneath that campaign.

The idea also spawned an Out of Home campaign in Q2, which was led by Paul Philpott.

Awards

Promax UK 2021 - Best on air campaign | Bronze

Promax UK 2021 - Best Press/OOH | Bronze

Answering the questions nobody’s ever asked.

This is a campaign that I directed, edited and led the creative on for Dave.

We decided to launch the brand new series Hypothetical by getting Josh and James to put the Hypothetical questions that feature on the show to the real world audience.

Wherever possible, Josh would directly ask the viewer a question and James would detail the rules.

This included taking over the gigantic screens at Waterloo station and using a hashtag to have people’s tweets in response appear on the screen at Waterloo station.

A spot that I edited and co-directed with Giles Bartlett to launch Britain’s Biggest Primary School on Channel 5.

A spot that I wrote and directed to launch Red Carpet Season on AMC, this was reversioned for many different territories all over Europe and Africa.

Some work that I wrote and directed to launch the second series of Ultimate Worrier on Dave.

A spot I wrote and directed for summer 2020 on Dave.

A promo that I directed and edited from the launch campaign for Big Zuu’s Big Eats on Dave.

A spot I wrote and edited for Species on AMC.

Awards

Promax Europe 2018 - Music or instrumental theme with or without vocals | Nominated

Promax Global 2018 - Use of original music/score | Nominated

This is something that I wrote for the Eddie Eats Xmas special on Dave.

Something I made for Dave

Something I directed for Dave, written by Aaron Gillies.

Awards

Promax UK 2021 - Best sponsorship/partnership | Bronze

The not exactly football related, football round up

One of the first promos I made at Dave, to launch their world cup stunt.

Dave had scheduled some of its best performing content directly after the matches of the 2018 World Cup would finish, so that viewers could join us for some *not exactly football related post match analysis.

We’ve all got one strange friend… Brian has four

A campaign that I led the creative on to launch Zapped series 3 on Dave.

Some examples of my copywriting for Channel 5’s press ads.