Epica d'Or 2001

The 2001 Epica d’Or was won by Mother, London, for the QTV television campaign.

QTV is a music TV channel available in the UK on Sky Digital.  The channel was launched by EMAP in the fall of 2000 following the success of Q magazine that addresses the same target audience.

The campaign features a would-be rock musician who’s convinced he’s a star despite ample evidence to the contrary.  In different spots he’s seen signing an autograph for a waitress who’s only bringing him his bill, unsuccessfully attempting to destroy his guitar as a tribute to Kurt Cobain, describing his musical style to a taxi driver who’s only asked for directions, and panicking because his seat belt is not attached after expounding on the dangers of his rock & roll lifestyle.

These and a number of other spots are wrapped up with the tag-line, "Q television.  Thousands who’ve made it..for the millions who haven’t."

Andy Bellass, Strategist at Mother, gives some background on the campaign:

"Having worked with EMAP for a number of years we got a call one day to see if we would like to launch a new TV channel for them called QTV with the objective of getting as many people to tune in as quickly as possible in a way which represented and communicated the unique relationship that Q readers (and soon to be viewers) had with the magazine.

Please welcome The Danster.  The living embodiment of every sad male wannabe rock star throughout the world and we’ve prepared a TV station just for him.

Everybody knows him, either because they have at some point been him or had to live with him.  He is in complete denial thinking he could have made it only if he hadn’t taken that accountancy course and can still be found (once the kids have gone to bed) re-arranging his old record collection in chronological rather than alphabetical order.

Martin Saunders, the actor, was cast in the role of the Danster.  We (Mother) had great success, with him before and during the casting.  It was obvious that he could not only be the character, at heart, he was the character.

Graham Lineham was the perfect choice of Director, The BAFTA award winning director who had written and directed a number of famous British sitcoms, such as Father Ted and Big Train, had wanted to work on a commercial for a while and the ‘Sitcom’ nature of The Danster Character made this campaign the perfect choice.

Having originally only scheduled to make 6 spots, Graham’s writing soon took wind and by the end of the shoot we had shot 11 TV commercials and 12 break bumpers to run on the TV station itself."

All the 2001 category winners were candidates for the Epica d’Or.  In addition to QTV, the final short-list included work for La Poste, Gauloises, Reebok, Airbus, Heineken, Interflora and the BMW C1.  After a process of progressive elimination QTV beat the BMW spot in the final round by 18 votes to 8.

 

Fame at Last

by Lewis Blackwell

There are few instantly recognisable characters in commercials - but The Danster, star of this year's Epica d'Or winner, is one of them. Male viewers will secretly identify with this rock star wannabe, while women will be reminded of partners who have begged them not to throw out their vinyl record collection, or spent whole evenings rearranging their CDs in chronological order.

When London agency Mother was asked by EMAP Digital to launch QTV [a cable television version of its successful music magazine Q] "to the right audience", it was obvious which creatives should handle the job. Jim Thornton and Ben Mooge are both writers. Mooge, the younger by ten years, is an English graduate who arrived at Mother as a tea boy but soon discovered he was better at writing ads ("I was rubbish at making tea", he confides). He found himself sitting next to Thornton and the pair immediately established a rapport based on their obsession with popular music in all its forms.

Dan "The Danster" Danielson is their creation, and they had no difficulty in fleshing him out, right down to his trainers. Within two weeks of receiving the brief, Thornton and Mooge had put together a blueprint for their character, including his Oasis-style jacket and unbranded baseball cap - which signals his determination to resist global branding while cunningly concealing his receding hairline.

To this character sketch they added about half a dozen one- line gags, and took the outline to the man who was their first choice for bringing it to life, Graham Linehan. The Irish writer-director is best known for Father Ted, a hugely popular and somewhat surreal British TV comedy series. Depicting the chaotic rural household of three eccentric Irish priests, the series was an unexpected mainstream success. Linehan is also the name behind Big Train, a zany and sardonic sketch show. He had never directed a commercial before but, as a former music journalist, he recognised the potential of The Danster and agreed immediately.

Despite the campaign's subsequent success Linehan admits that he is not a natural commercials director. "The QTV ads were enjoyable to do, and Mother are a great company, but I'm not a huge fan of directing advertisements in general. I hate the meetings, for one thing. And I hate the fact that the ads can be re-cut without your permission, as I really think that comedy happens in the editing suite."

Linehan attributes much of the campaign's success to the actor who filled The Danster's training shoes. "We wouldn't have done nearly so well if we'd cast anyone other than Martin Freeman. He's an incredibly talented actor, and his sense of humour is such that I didn't have to tell him the point of any joke more than once. That made it easier to come up with things on the day, as I knew that he could handle any ideas I threw at him."

Only six spots had been scheduled at the original brief, but these were each shot in one take, and were in the can well before the end of the schedule. By then there was no stopping the crew, as more ideas came thick and fast from the creatives. the director, the cameraman ["a star in his own firmament", according to Thornton and Mooge] and The Danster himself, Martin Freeman. A self-confessed musicnerd, Freeman not only understood but could actually envisage himself as the character. While filming in a guitar shop, for example, he began to ad-lib spontaneously. In the resulting spot, he returns a piece of electronic equipment, confessing: "I bought this last week." Pause. "I don't know what it is."

Crew members stepped in to play additional characters. Mooge appears as a music shop assistant, for instance, and in the hilarious cafe commercial, members of the crew play the waitress and The Danster's girlfriend. When The Danster is presented with the bill, he signs his autograph instead of paying it. In another spot, he pathetically importunes his partner: "Do you not think I might be just a little bit black?"

 

"Oasis, Moby, Blur...what's wrong with the word "The"? It was all right for The Beatles. It was all right for The Stones. It was even all right for The The..."

 

The girlfriend was put in the script at the suggestion of the client, to avoid making The Danster look like a complete and utter loser. Not surprisingly, she makes an early exit. As the pair stroll through a shopping centre, she ducks into a store while he complains about the disappearance of the word "The" from pop music. "Oasis, Moby, Blur...what's wrong with the word "The"? It was all right for The Beatles. It was all right for The Stones. It was even all right for The The..."

 

"If it wasn't for my music, I'd probably be either dead or in prison, know what I mean?"

 

Thanks to a combination of enthusiasm and efficiency, for a surprisingly small budget of £110,000, the team produced eleven 30-second commercials and twelve 10-second "break bumpers". And each one contains a priceless Danster moment whether he's proclaiming: "Feedback is my evil mistress!", or failing to smash a guitar after announcing: "This act of destruction is dedicated to the memory of Kurt Cobain." Taxi drivers seem to particularly suffer at The Danster's hands. In one spot, he drones on about his musical influences instead of providing directions, while in another he outlines the hazards of his dangerous rock and roll lifestyle - before realising that his seatbelt isn't fastened and flying into a panic. Even a passing elderly woman gets the Danster treatment, when he tells her: "If it wasn't for my music, I'd probably be either dead or in prison, know what I mean?"

The adoption of The Danster as a cult figure among the music TV-watching generation is remarkable, given that the spots were only ever seen by the relatively small group of subscribers to EMAP cable television channels. Yet while most of The Danster's audience don't share his sad lack of self-awareness, most of them have indulged in his fantasy rock star life for at least a few moments. The series' tag-line says it all: "QTV. Thousands who've made it...for the millions who haven't."

Thornton and Mooge are surprised by the success of their creation, imagining that honours such as the Epicad'Or are only handed out to "slick surfing commercials" for high-pro- clients. But they are especially pleased that audiences have found the campaign entertaining, dmitting that they would much rather entertain people than sell products.

The ad-hoc Danster shoot is typical of the organic approach that characterises their work, and the agency's approach in general. At Mother, individual creatives are free to develop their own campaigns, as well as other enterprises, and Thornton and Mooge both get involved in separate projects. With a Norwegian colleague, Mooge recently directed a vide for a disc that went to number one in Norway. It's the sortof statistic The Danster would love - and he is not alone. Hence his popularity with a huge audience - even if half of them are laughing at him with a tinge of embarrassment.

Lewis Blackwell is the creative director of Getty Images, the world's leading provider of images. For many years he was the editor- in-chief and publisher of the magazine Creative Review, and now contributes columns to several titles worldwide. As a writer he is also known for several critically acclaimed books on communication, including the bestselling creative title The End Of Print. His most recent book is Soon: Brands of Tomorrow.