'Build a Life' Hits the Nail on the Head with Uncommon's OOH Addition to B&Q Campaign

21/09/2020

Uncommon

Advertising Agency

London, UK

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21/09/2020

The film, made in collaboration with SixtyFour Music and Chris Hewitt, is accompanied by powerful OOH suite of 17 individually designed executions to reflect the brand’s new purpose

B&Q’s first commercial from Uncommon Creative Studios released earlier this month is a clever compilation of real-life footage that captures what it’s really like to live in a home - the perfect antidote to the impossible Instagram interiors we often lust after.

SixtyFour Music worked with director Chris Hewitt and the Uncommon team on the agency’s first campaign for the brand.

The film’s footage comes from 69 different cities in the UK, somehow, and arguably very cleverly, the film has managed to avoid the sentimentality of many campaigns being made during the pandemic and focus on the nuts and bolts of real life DIY.

The ad is beautifully sound tracked by the Cinematic Orchestra’s ‘Manhatta’. The original 11-minute piece took inspiration from a short film made in 1921 about the creation of Manhattan, considered by some to be the first American avant-garde film.

From a delicate opening, the track builds into a dramatic, gorgeous finale with broad sweeps of strings and piano chords at the forefront. The piece in its entirety is enrapturing. Fortunately the sixty second edit created for the ad does do the piece the justice it deserves.

The Cinematic Orchestra composed ‘Manhatta’ relatively early on in their career. Arguably an early crowning achievement for them. It’s a strictly cinematic piece with perfect immediacy, it doesn’t once feel monotonous or repetitive as one listens through the full eleven minutes and twelve seconds of the mini symphony. Anyone not familiar with the track as a whole should have a listen, it really is quite stunning.

To accompany the film, Uncommon has also created a powerful suite of 17 individually designed executions to reflect the brand’s new purpose, ‘Build a life’, in a bold new OOH campaign launching across the UK. The art direction of the campaign marries together imagery of everyday DIY products with powerful statements inspired by life at home and home improvement.

To follow the success of the launch, the OOH campaign reflects life moments and how home improvement can shape them. The extensive series of work scales across the UK echoing ‘Build a life’ with its sentiment artfully reflected across these disruptive designs.

The art direction of the campaign marries together imagery of everyday DIY products with powerful statements inspired by life at home and home improvement. The design look and feel follows a disruptive approach, celebrating B&Q’s famously orange look and feel within a fresh stripped back style for the brand.

Executions include simple copy such as ‘Change’ paired with an image of a single nail, prompting people to think about the power they have to make their life better with only a nail. To a tilted upright drill paired with a single syllable — ‘Art’. To executions depicting nostalgic moments such as a dimmer switch paired with ‘First kiss’ and spilt paint pots paired with ‘Teenagers’.

The work will run up and down the UK in all major cities across six, 48 and 96 sheet sites with two bespoke banners running in Glasgow and Bristol.

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