British Gas Spoofs Home Improvement Ads with Campaign Celebrating the Humble Boiler

British Gas launched new ads over the weekend as part of a wider campaign to showcase the forgotten part of home improvement – the humble boiler. Boiler upgrades can add value to your home, lower carbon emissions and importantly, reduce your energy bills.

The digital 6 and 48 sheets playfully spoof the style of well-known and recognisable Home and DIY retailers, placing boilers directly in the home renovation space at a key time of year for the category.

The creative OOH campaign, developed by nucleus, the integrated agency group responsible for all British Gas communications, clearly delivers the message that upgrading your boiler goes hand-in-hand with upgrading your home, driving consideration among the home renovation audience who will be taking on some DIY across the bank holiday weekend.

Andy Freeman, marketing director at British Gas, said: “The campaign kicks off with some fun creative built on the more serious insight that a boiler upgrade can often be the best home improvement you can make. Our OOH taps into contextual awareness, showing up in sites near Home Improver locations around the busy bank holiday. And the efficiency message is an important one - switching from an inefficient, G-rated boiler to a modern A-rated boiler has the potential to save up to £580* per year on bills, helping people live more sustainably and affordably.”

Toby Allen, executive creative director at nucleus, said: “The creative challenge here was to move people away from viewing boilers as a resented panic purchase, to a proactive value-adding one. Boilers are often considered as purely functional when in fact they truly are the heart of the home. Spoofing famous DIY ads is a strong and simple way of delivering that message to a key audience and lets us to do it with humour and swagger.”

By overlaying first party postcode data with Home Improver hotspots, nucleus identified key OOH locations, directly targeting those who are considering home renovation. Roadside digital 6 sheets are in proximity to key retailers in sites cross-referenced with the busiest high streets, to drive the greatest number of impacts during a DIY-heavy Bank Holiday weekend.

The OOH campaign ran from 30th April to 2nd May in 122 sites across the UK, before the launch of a wider home improvement campaign with new creative.