Why W+K Let The Public Blow Dave's Marketing Budget In 24 hours

Wieden+Kennedy London has taken a different approach to advertising, to promote the new and exclusive Dave series 24 Hours to Go Broke, where five pairs of celebrities are tasked with spending a suitcase full of Dave’s cash (up to the value of £10k in local currency) in 24 hours. The campaign is the first work to come from W+K since being added to the UKTV network’s roster of creative agencies.

Ahead of last night’s show premiere, W+K helped Dave embark on its own challenge: spending £10k of the programme’s marketing budget leading up to the first episode by paying the general public to help advertise the show. 

By @pippa_d1

This includes inviting Twitter users to take a stab at advertising by creating their own ads, in exchange for cash. Other madcap ideas to empty the piggy bank include sponsoring the UK’s worst football team, ‘buying’ moustaches from members of the public and shaving them off to create a hairy advertisement. Contributions are compensated on the epicness of said moustache, naturally. 

Dave also paid a farmer to turn his cows into a living, mooing billboard, transform a rat into a style icon, convince a brave individual to change their name by deedpoll to the series name and convince a takeaway shop to change its sign and menu to 24 Hours to Go Broke. But did they succeed? 

The countdown began at 6pm on Monday 12th May, and continued throughout the 24 hours leading up to the series premiere at 10pm on Tuesday 13th May. 

Fans were kept up to date on Dave’s 24 Hours to Go Broke shenanigans by following #24hToGoBroke and @JoinDave on Twitter or via Dave’s Facebook at facebook.com/davewittybanter Highlights of the activity were shown live during the 24 hour campaign on Waterloo station’s epic motion screen.

W+K creatives Charlie Hurst and Eddie Fisher say of the idea "When we first got the brief we realized we had a client with a similar creative appetite, which naturally drove us to a more stupid, I mean braver, idea. We came up with a campaign to spend their entire marketing budget in a day and it all took off from there. Or spiraled out of control. Depends how you look at it."