You Can Do It has been UK DIY retailer, B&Q’s, slogan for nearly 40 years. It has been in popular culture for longer. Has it become a little watery? Probably. Uncommon has given it a recharge for B&Q – bringing it front and centre with power and emotion in a new campaign.
Uncommon’s campaign is also the pinnacle of a new B&Q partnership with ITV, brokered by Dentsu Creative Entertainment, that launched during ITV’s hugely successful and final series of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Take Away.
The campaign’s 90-second commercial gets inside the heads of DIY-ers. One by one they begin tasks and then confront their self-doubt – their can’ts. Then there is a gear shift. Doubt is ignored, and action is taken because You Can Do It when you B&Q it. The campaign idea is not “innovative”. Its power is that it is human. It understands the stultifying doubt people feel during renovation and repair tasks and B&Q solves that problem.
The idea was built from B&Q’s Slice of Home Life report that revealed 80% of people want to make changes in their homes, but only 36% feel like they can actually do it. With people having less time, less money, less motivation and more worry about what could go wrong, the words, You Can Do It, play an important role in giving people the confidence to tackle their DIY projects.
Tom Hampson, marketing director at B&Q, commented, “You Can Do It has been part of B&Q’s story for nearly 40 years. It’s one of our most distinctive brand assets and we’re delighted to be putting a spotlight on it with our brand-new campaign. Not only that — but its relevance today has never felt more important as we know that many put off starting home improvement projects. Overcoming that doubt and believing that you can do it, is made easier when you have a trusted partner like B&Q to empower you to get started.”
Nils Leonard, Co-Founder at Uncommon, added, “We’re really proud of our continued partnership with one of the UK’s most loved DIY brands, B&Q — as we bring new life and meaning to their household tagline, You Can Do It. We live in a world where we’re told we can’t more and more, every day. This campaign is all about reclaiming that message with power in a way only B&Q can.”
The film will run across TV and VOD on ITV, Channel 4 and Sky for the rest of the month and into March, when the OOH will appear.
B&Q’s partnership with ITV is an investment in what is a big TV come-together moment. It consists of a series of idents during the final season of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Take Away and ITV’s Proudly Presents format, reproducing and reimagining the conventional ITV graphic concept into a monumental 6 metre by 11 metre handmade installation, marking a media first for ITV by allowing a brand to feature within the Proudly Presents format.
The idents embody the You Can Do It mantra. They show B&Q products building a set that teases what’s to come for viewers over 4, 10-second ads, which will air sequentially during the ad breaks of Saturday Night Takeaway. The series will climax as an epic reveal of B&Q’s monumental creation that melts into the debut of B&Q’s new campaign film for You Can Do It.
Credits:
Client: B&Q
Creative Studio: Uncommon Creative Studio
Media Partnership Agency: Dentsu Creative
Production Company: Lovesong
Director: Elliott Power
Producer: Neil Andrews
Executive Producer: Shirley O’Connor
Creative Director: Daniel Wolfe
DOP: Patrick Golan
Editing: Marsheen
Editor: Dom Leung
Edit Assist: Matthew Blacklock
Producer: Harriet Cawley
Sound: King Lear
Sound Engineer: Jack Sedgwick
Sound: Dugal Macdiarmid & Ed Downham
Producer: Natalie Curran
Post-Production & VFX: Selected Works
Producer: Dan Crozier
VFX Supervisor: Greg Spencer
Art Director: Amber Frisenda
DMP & Compositor: Lyndall Spagnoletti
Compositor: Maheshwaran C C
Colour: Company 3
Colour Producer: Chris Anthony
Colourist: Simon Bourne
Music Supervision: Curation Music
Music Supervisors: Sunny Kapoor & Connie Edwards
