LBB - Revolut - “All Eyes on Revolut”

PLANNING

When Revolut's brief for an ad starring none other than multi-hyphenate comedy legend Munya Chawawa landed in the director’s inbox, he was excited. The Revolut marketing team were keen to make something that felt 'distinctively Munya' that would increase sign ups and brand awareness. 

So, how do you make an ad starring an online talent that the audience won't skip? The first port of call was delving into Munya's universe: what he's up to at the moment, where he's headed, what memes and trends he's involved with, and what his audience looks for in his content. 

Armed with this intel and Revolut's campaign strategy, the director got to work dreaming up ridiculous toplines and turning them into rough scripts. He likes to get to the scripting part of the process really early on as he feels it's the best way to stress test an idea in the talent's tone of voice and the easiest way for a client to understand what's in his head.

EXECUTION

When writing the scripts, priority went to making something Munya's audience would find unexpected and entertaining - this value exchange with online audiences is super important. If they are given great, entertaining and funny content, they'll stick around to watch the whole 80-second ad. 

The director’s job becomes making the audience eat their vegetables; weaving the product neatly into something which feels inherently like a film Munya would make whether the brand was present or not.

To do this, the director referred back to the Munya universe. The mission was to sprinkle in as many nuanced easter eggs as possible. In fact, he went one step further by welcoming Munya into the writing process - because no one knows Munya's voice like Munya does. In fact, the best gags came from Munya himself.

In keeping with Munya’s famed YouTube skits, the ad sees him play more than one character: an exaggerated version of himself trying to impress a high-flying Hollywood producer (also played by Munya) over dinner at a high-end restaurant. All while demonstrating the game-changing capabilities of the Revolut app.

The film is littered with personal nods to Munya's content; from playing multiple characters, as is synonymous with his comedy skits, to the title of the script in the opening: THE MUN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND. The cocktail with the umbrella on the table, the use of Nathan and Steve, his real-life bodyguards. All of these details signify to his fans that this is something covered in Munya's fingerprints and, most importantly, that Revolut understands the audience they're trying to access.

RESULTS

As well as forming a major part of Revoult’s paid You Tube ad media campaign, the ad was posted to Munya’s 1.3 million followers on Instagram. 

To say that the ad went down well with Munya’s loyal and hyper-engaged audience is an understatement. Here are just a handful of the hundreds of comments on Munya’s Instagram post:

I won’t skip the ads if you’re in them all!

You didn’t have to go so hard with this advert. But my god I’m glad you did.

Why can't all ads be this good 😂 Normally I'm the first to skip past them but this is genius! You deserve that movie deal

Petition for Munya to do all the ads on TV from now on

Clear evidence from the audience themselves that the director had indeed created an ad that the audience didn’t want to skip .

Press also covered Munya’s ad with Campaign, IMDB, Tubefilter, Marketing Beat and Mobile Marketing Magazine all writing up articles on it. 

CULTURAL EVIDENCE

The brands that will win out are those that adopt the deepest levels of collaboration, trust that their talent understands their own audience better than anyone, and prioritise entertaining that audience so much so that they forget they're even watching an advert in the first place.