Moneysupermarket x Action Man - Epic

Moneysupermarket had been running their ‘epic’ themed campaigns since 2011. We started working with them in 2016 and helped them achieved enormous success from two campaigns featuring He-Man and Skeletor from Masters of the Universe, which had ran for 6 months each. The first had shown Skeletor dancing to Irena Cara’s ‘Fame’, and the second involved He-Man and Skeletor paying tribute to Dirty Dancing. After such huge success, the question to best asked was ‘what comes next?’.

With the brief to find a suitable character within budget, we prepared a shortlist of different characters that we felt were the best to consider. The creative team took some of these and developed scripts around them which we shared with each of the Rights Holders and walked them through the creative vision. We also negotiated the commercial terms in the event of the creative moving forward with their characters.

Moneysupermarket’s agency Mother London reached out to us to confirm that they wanted to continue with the creative theme of iconic characters feeling ‘epic’, but they wanted a new character to be the star. The character had to have a very nostalgic appeal to a British audience. The licensing fees also needed to be within budget and we had to ensure the character’s Rights Holder would be comfortable with the idea of the daring and surprising creative.

The character chosen was Action Man, the iconic British action figure owned by Hasbro. As Hasbro’s licensing agent, we finalised the licensing commercial terms and managed all other aspects of the project from start to finish without charging any clearance fees. We are able to do this thanks to our unique business model and strong appointed agency relationship with Hasbro.

This was a stop motion shoot involving a number of different stations being filmed simultaneously. Born Licensing’s David Born visited the shoot in London and was on site to help Mother London and Moneysupermarket with any licensing related issues.

It was our job to ensure Hasbro, the Licensors of Action Man, were comfortable with the creative development. They reviewed the script, storyboard, action figures, costumes, edits and final material. It was important to ensure the Action Man action figures appearing in the commercial were authentic.Born Licensing managed the entire approval process from start to finish, allowing all other parties to focus on what they do best.

The campaign launched at primetime during Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway on ITV1. It was very well received and was named Ad of the Day in both The Drum and AdWeek. It went on to win Gold at The Andy’s and a Wood Pencil at the D&AD Awards 2018. The campaign consisted of 60 second, 30 second and 10 second spots, radio, print, online and social media.