- Product/Brand - Cancer Research
- Spot - Join The Pink Army
- Music Title - Club Foot
- Composer - Pizzorno, Karloff
- Publisher - Sony/ATV
- Artist - Kasabian
- Master Rights - Sony Music
- Music Supervisor - Platinum Rye
- Ad Agency - Mother
- Creatives - Mother
- Film Company - Riff Raff Films
- Film Director - The Sacred Egg
- Post Production - MPC
- Air Date - 1/3/15
Mother fires the first shot in the annual bid to persuade women all over the country to get their running kit on and raise money for Cancer Research UK.
In the three years since the agency took over the account, it has ramped up the combative side of the charity’s character to the point where the message behind the 2015 offer quite literally hits new heights in hatred!
Directed by The Sacred Egg (otherwise known as former VCCP creatives Alex Mavor and Ed Kaye) it eschews the all-female, fun run footage of past CRUK commercials for something entirely cinematic.
Indeed, from top TV and stage actor Maxine Peake’s pitch perfect - but no less vitriolic – voiceover to its scenes of pure and unashamed anger reminiscent of the heightened realism of a major Coronation Street or East Enders trailer, this is one of the hardest-hitting clips to grace the adbreaks in a very long time.
As the strapline says: hell hath no fury like a woman in pink!
And to sell the idea on through the soundtrack Mother has returned to the Kasabian catalogue which served it so well for its original CRUK awareness ad in 2013.
Back then it was Underdog, the opening cut on the Leicester band’s third Sony RCA album West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, which turned up the heat under a film focusing on embattled cancer patients and their dogged will to survive.
Now it’s the furious bass riff from the group’s debut Top 20 single Club Foot injecting iron into the soul of a spot which has not only upped the ante on the aggression front but may also have changed the face of medical charity TV campaigns forever.
Focus groups would have us believe that female audiences don’t really get off on hard rock.
But on this one it would seem like Mother knows better!
