If you watched Britain’s Got Talent on Saturday, chances are you saw the premiere of the new Warburtons advert. Somewhere between the talking dog and death-defying free-runner, the show featured a commercial for the baking company which starred none other than iconic actor Sylvester Stallone.
Warburtons is arguably one of Greater Manchester’s most famous brands. The company originates and is still headquartered in Bolton, where the advert was filmed. As a B2B PR agency based near to Manchester, we were excited for one of our city’s brands taking centre stage in advertising. Not only that, we were delighted to see a well-known face from Hollywood in our city.
While it’s hardly the highlight of Stallone’s career, I was pretty impressed by the advert. It sees Stallone pitch an idea of a film to Mr Warburton called ‘The Deliverers’ and shows the idea in action, in which he wakes up in the early hours and delivers bread to many stores. Employees of Warburtons are featured too, so the advert isn’t purely celebrity focussed and bridges back to the real people who deliver bread every day. Only Mr Stallone could glam that up.
Personally, I think the advert does well to incorporate Stallone’s image. ‘The Deliverers’ takes the form of a thrilling action film, just like we’re used to seeing Stallone in. I for one was anxiously held in suspense when he got stuck in traffic and had to deliver the bread by hand! I think that many adverts with celebrity endorsements are guilty of not capturing the celebrity’s persona. A lot of the time, they’re just included as a face for us to recognise and the advert doesn’t build a story around who they are.
‘The Deliverers’ shows a lot of scope as a long-term marketing tactic. Could it become a Warburtons sub-brand? Warburtons’ Twitter account is already promoting a competition that aligns with the advert. There’s potential for it to become as successful as Shreddies’ sub-brand, ‘Knitting Nanas’; a campaign which has been successfully running for years. Over social media, the ‘knitting nanas’ get involved with current affairs. Recently they’ve been battling for Number 10.
Flat caps off to Warburtons who have used Stallone’s image to create a fun and memorable advert which has been shared countless times over social media. We can safely say that Stallone has ‘earned his crust.’
Alex Brown has just started his career at Skout PR and will be a regular contributor to the Skout blog.
