Thousands of fox cubs are killed every year preparing hounds for the hunting season in a barbaric practice called cubbing. Engine Creative and Keep The Ban are hoping that their TV sports show parody will trigger outrage in people. Keep The Ban is a non-profit organisation that campaigns against the hunting of wildlife for sport, including the killing of fox cubs through cubbing.
Cubbing, the equivalent of the pre-season for fox hunting, typically occurs in late August and September, and involves hunters training their dogs to kill fox cubs as they are easier to catch than adult foxes. The practice is responsible for slaughtering thousands of defenceless fox cubs in England and Wales each year. Yet few members of the public know about it. 88% of people have never heard of it, and just 5% know what it is, making cubbing one of fox hunting’s dirtiest secrets. But when it is explained, 69% of people are against it, according to Keep The Ban research conducted in July 2022.
Under the 2004 Hunting Act, fox hunting, deer hunting, and hare hunting are illegal in the UK. Several exemptions under the act are used by fox hunts to avoid prosecution, however, making it difficult for the police and Crown Prosecution Service to enforce the hunting ban, a situation Keep The Ban is campaigning to change.
Engine Creative and Keep The Ban’s awareness campaign aims to persuade more people to support the campaign against it. Keep The Ban was inspired by groups in charge of fox hunts rebranding to The British Hound SportsAssociation earlier this year. They wanted to lambast the ridiculousness of seeing this barbaric act as a sport. So they are presenting cubbing as the World’s Worst Sport.
The campaign film launched on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok on August 25 2022.
Rob Pownall, founder at Keep The Ban, stated, “It’s 2022, and there are people going out ripping fox cubs to pieces. It’s shocking and bizarre. That is exactly what this film encapsulates—a normalisation of an almost surreal pastime continues to occur across the UK. Using an easily recognisable format, we could expose this grotesque activity to a new audience.”
Steve Hawthorne, creative director at Engine Creative, added, “The bad thing about a project like this is that it forces you to face up to how sick and twisted some human beings are. The good thing is that you get to work with some truly awesome human beings to do something about it. In this case, those human beings came in the shape of the wonderful people at Glue Society, Biscuit, the Mill, String and Tins, plus the endlessly inspirational and impressive crew at Keep The Ban. Go Team Cub.”
Credits:
Client: Keep the Ban
Client Team: Rob Pownall & Matt Smithers
Agency: Engine Creative (soon to be House 337)
Chief Creative Officer: Billy Faithfull
Creative Directors: Steve Hawthorne & Katy Hopkins
Creatives: Doug Redfern & Joe Roberts
Designer: Aaron Pacey
Senior Influencer Strategist: Paul Lynch
Senior Strategist: Jack Cartwright
Account Management: Rich Williams
Agency Producer: Henry Davies
Production Company Biscuit Filmworks x Revolver
Director: Glue Society
Executive Producer: Sam Chitty
Producer: Adam Farley
Post production: The Mill
Post-Producer: Kathryn Wigginton
Colourist: Maruf Kahn @ The Mill
Sound Design: String and Tins
