Christmas Jumper Day raises the big bucks

Watch out Christmas Day, you’re facing a threat who is rapidly stealing all your thunder. Christmas Jumper Day is gaining so much hype every year that its importance in the calendar could soon take over Christmas!  The nation has really gone nuts with Christmas jumpers – with the new rule being the-more-revolting-the-better.

Naturally we all got on board, and donned our favourite festive number while fundraising over £700 for Save the Children.

In the spirit of fundraising for a good cause, we got sweaty in our Christmas Jumpers and got festively plump from the annual bake sale.  

A Blind Cider tasting served a dual purpose of aiding and abetting the brownie gluttons whilst also ensuring all St Luker’s really can identify the Bittersweet taste of Strongbow and the sweet joy of Old Mout – luckily the results were mostly positive!

Lastly, our first Silent Auction was held where lots of (ahem) premium prizes were up for grabs… including having our lovely CEO Neil as your Tea slave, a week of gourmet lunch, an extra half day of holiday, and a personal agenda-setting-idea with the mystic Dan and Rose.  Sadly people also donated far too much to keep me silent for a day! Congratulations to Save the Children on another record breaking year! #Xmasjumperday

Watch out. The Kiwi has landed!

If there’s ever a perfect time for a delicious new fruity cider to try, it’s the summer. As previously blogged we’ve recently launched the latest Strongbow Citrus Edge cider, but to follow this week we’ve launched a completely new brand of cider to the market.

Old Mout (pronounced like boot) is famous throughout New Zealand for its quirky flavours, and our client Heineken gave us at St Luke’s the opportunity to launch this gem of a brand in the UK, ready for the summer beer garden visits and BBQs.

Old Mout is positioned as a competitor to other World Ciders such as Rekorderlig and Kopparberg, and has a very fun, playful and quirky tone of voice. As this brand is completely unknown to the UK market, and there is no other New Zealand cider in the market – we have taken our creative down the route of ‘Get the Kiwi taste for adventure.”

The creative which will roll out across Press, OOH and Digital media is copy-led, and features lines such as “The Kiwi has landed” “11,675 miles cider making’s come a long way” and “Have passionfruit parachute on to your tongue.” Using the language of travel and adventure, we are associating the Old Mout brand with the typically Kiwi adventurous approach to life.

The ads will be seen all across London and Manchester, with a mix of underground posters, roadside posters and digital screens. We've had some great coverage in industry press already, check out The Drum article here.

Grab life, and Old Mout, with both hands and check out which is your favourite flavour – Passionfruit and Apple, Summer Berries or Kiwi and Lime.

Let us know what you think @stlukescomms.

St Luke’s, Strongbow and Bob the snake team up to launch the drink of the summer

With the days getting longer, and more importantly brighter, you could be forgiven for starting to consider the idea of hatching out of hibernation and stepping outside. This isn’t something that has gone unnoticed at the Strongbow offices. The launch of their new lemon and lime cider variation, Strongbow Citrus Edge, is a perfectly timed move and one that Strongbow believes will create “the drink of the summer”. This variation follows on from the incredibly successful launch of Strongbow Dark Fruit last year.

                          

As you would expect from Strongbow this is not a light refreshing tipple to be enjoyed after an afternoon lazily dipping your toes in the paddling pool. This is a light refreshing tipple to be enjoyed after a hard afternoon EARNING IT. Establishing this principle was the challenge which St Luke’s was set. After months of hard work we came up with the idea of combining the appealing fresh fruit which makes the drink taste great with something a little more sinister. This is reflected in the work as at first glance it appears to be showing the Citrus Edge nestled in a bush of luscious lemons and limes. However, when you look closely you see that there are several vicious looking snakes hiding in the foliage. This is particularly apparent in the animated work, which features eerily life-like movement of the snakes. 

The entire St Luke’s team is incredibly proud of this campaign as we feel it uses Strongbow’s well established brand messages to tell a new story about this innovative product. However, the ophidiophobics (look it up) amongst us might need to keep an eye out while Bob (as we know him) and his friends are slithering around the nation in their various shapes, sizes and formats.

Time to dust off the awards cabinet!

It's not every day that an advert for a feminine hygiene product is mentioned in the same breath as ones for Nike, BMW or the award hoarding awareness campaign 'Dumb Ways to Die.' However, we're delighted to say that our Mooncup 'Rap Battle' won Bronze for 'Best Original Song' at the London International Awards (LIA) awards in November.

                                               
The London based awards celebrate the creativity and power of ideas in all forms of advertising, digital, branded content, design, production, music and sound. The lyrical flow of our rap battle and its unconventional content stood out amongst some pretty hefty competition, and we're delighted with our bronze trophy.

And the winning doesn't stop there! Our Moments of Truth campaign for Strongbow, which launched earlier this year has also just won a Silver in the Epica Awards in the drinks category.
     
                                

They say things come in threes, and here is our final win (for the moment!) Our Business Director Jonathan Dale has been crowned winner of The Biggr Picture, a competition run by Campaign and Flickr to find the most talented 'extra curricular' Adlander. We're very proud of Jonathan's culinary achievements and his star feature in this week's Campaign.

Cricket gets the Strongbow treatment

As a team at St Luke’s, we believe in practicing what we preach. So when positioning Strongbow as the brand which “rewards men who step up to a challenge and get the job done”, the next step was to set up some live challenges to see which Strongbow drinkers really could live up to their name! 

                                   

The first, Cricket, goes live today and shows the story of eight finalists (picked from thousands) who experienced two days of intense training before the final winner was selected to face an over from Jimmy Anderson in front of a 200-strong crowd. 

Keen cricketer, Pete Moxom was chosen as the winner to face deliveries travelling up to 85mph from Anderson. All he had to do was last the full over. Watch Pete step up and EARN IT. as he takes on Jimmy in the first Strongbow challenge.

If you think you have what it takes to EARN IT. there is still time to sign up for the Comedy challenge.

Dark Fruit has got the bottle

It's been a rip-roaring success in cans, and now Strongbow have released the bottled variety of Dark Fruit. We've got a new OOH poster to mark the launch, challenging you to grab the bottle from its thorny grip to earn its darkly refreshing taste.

The dark glass bottle and the black, gold and purple branding reflect the premium feel to this cider, and allow it to stand out even more from the rest of the Strongbow range. Infused with juices of blackberries and blackcurrants and the Strongbow sharpness mean this is no feeble fruity cider.

Take a bow, Dark Fruit.

The combination of cider and blackcurrant is one which has earned its place in the hearts and tastebuds of many British drinkers. The initial thought may trigger the nostalgia of "cider and black" and "Snakebite," but this time it’s getting the Strongbow treatment.

Step up Dark Fruit, the latest addition to the Strongbow portfolio flavoured with sweet, but sharp blackcurrant and blackberry juices.

The art direction is dark and moody, with brambles and twisted thorns showing that this fruity cider stands out from its sweet and, dare we say, more gentle competitor offerings.

Our work can be seen all over billboards and digital screens nationwide, the digital version can be viewed from clicking on the image above. Bulletproof designed the matte black and purple can, reflecting the more premium nature of this cider compared to original Strongbow.

It has been going down a treat too, with hundreds of fans tweeting that it’s “the future,” tastes “amazing” and is their "new favourite" drink this summer. We're mighty pleased.

It’s available in cans at the moment, but will be released in bottles next month. If you haven’t tried one yet, what are you waiting for?

Earn it, enjoy it, and let us know what you think!