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Don’t be an idiot, have a Glossie. Colenso BBDO takes out May Glossies win with DB Export Dry ad

As you wind down and get set for your two days off ahead of the next
week, spare a thought for Colenso BBDO’s copywriter Simon Vicars. The
poor bloke was sitting in an airport lounge when we called him, getting
ready to wing his way to Fiji for a week’s “work”. Then we had to break
the news Colenso BBDO had won the May round of The Glossies with 34
percent of the votes for its ‘Idiot’ print ad in NZ Rugby World.
‘Idiot’, part of DB Export Dry’s ‘The Wine is Over’ campaign, put
itself a fare distance ahead of its closest rivals. Bettle’s Langham ad,
featured in New Idea, placed second with 22 percent of votes while BCG2’s effort for Audi in Metro earned it third place with a 16 percent share of votes.

‘Idiot’ is one of a series of print ads that Vicar says were born out
of the insight that a lot of the target market drink wine because they
feel obligated to.

“They’ll turn up to an event like a wedding and
if they go for a beer they feel people judging them,” he says. “It was
really calling out that truth and telling those people there was a great
alternative. Of course we want them to drink Export Dry instead of
other beers and that was our unique way in.”

As for adapting the tongue in cheek ‘Great Wine Depression’ TVC to print, Vicar says that was an easy process.

“It
was so much fun to write. We had the ad on our desk and when people
walked past they would always comment on it, so we knew we were onto
something.”

While there was the temptation to incorporate a touch
of ‘80s man’ into the print ad, in the end Vicar says the team knew it
would have left DB Export Dry “in the past” when it was trying to bring
it “into the present day”.

“We had to bring print into the present
day as opposed to doing ’80s print otherwise it would have made DB
Export Dry feel like an ’80s beer.”

For the record, Vicar isn’t a
wine man himself. He says he’s predominantly a beer man and judging from
the reception he’s received from some wine connoisseurs, he doesn’t
think he’ll be drinking wine anytime soon.

“They might have poisoned it or something,” he jokes. “There’s a lot of hate for us out there in the wine community.”

The
whole point of pitching the beer against a premium product like wine,
he says, was to put it in its proper place as a premium beer.

“99
percent of the people saw it as the light hearted angle that it was, but
some people took offence, which is ultimately what you want. So long as
it’s a small but loud minority that hate your ad, then that’s great.”

‘The Wine is Over’ campaign, though encountering a few detractors, has received a lot of praise and this latest Glossies win adds to two previous NAB Newspaper ad of the month accolades.

Credits

Agency: Colenso BBDO, Auckland

Client: DB Breweries

Creative Chairman: Nick Worthington

Creative Director: Levi Slavin

Art Director: James Tucker

Copywriter: Simon Vicars

Producer: Sarah Hough

Planner: James Hurman, Hayley Pardoe

Agency Producer: Jen Storey

Retoucher: Tias Somers

Photographer: Alistair Guthrie

Designer: Kate Slavin

Senior Account Director: Tim Ellis

Account manager: Patrick Rowley

Senior Account Manager: Stefanie Robertson

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