Big Save Furniture has stopped shouting—UPDATED

Having made a name for itself with its in-your-face adverts, Big Save Furniture has decided to shift gears as it shows off a gentler side in its latest campaign.

Featuring horses, surfboards, fairy lights and a tennis court, the new sepia-filtered ads shine a much softer light on the company’s brand. And while director Lily Salter (aka that lady from the Big Save Furniture ads that yells at you for 30 seconds) still makes an appearance, she’s swapped her loud and brash tactics for a more subdued approach, appearing much more relaxed as she shops for furniture on her iPad Mini. 

The ads now resemble something more akin to a life insurance advertisement rather than the over the top Big Save advertisements we’ve grown to love (read: accept).

Big Save Furniture’s infamous screaming adverts have often been described as the worst ads on television, with the company taking out Fair Go’s award for Worst Ad of the Year in 2011.

Despite being nationally recognised as being terrible, according to Salter, Big Save’s mattresses practically flew out of the store. Bed sales leapt 11 percent after the ads – not bad for a company that sells thousands of beds every week.

“We are so stoked,” said Salter, somewhat perplexingly, at the time of the award. “We work terribly hard to be New Zealand’s best value furniture retailer. And it’s just awesome to finally be nationally recognised,”

The shouty ads were written by Salter and her father Ray McKimm, who is the founder of Big Save Furniture.

StopPress has contacted the company inquiring if its new campaign was created by an agency or in-house. Big Save has yet to respond. 

UPDATE: StopPress has been informed that Chameleon Partners was the agency behind the new campaign. The creative director was Simon Shattky and the producer was Nic Craig. 

• A version of this story originally appeared on The Register