Halfords is the UK’s biggest motoring and cycling brand with stores, auto-centres and even mobile experts. They are fast moving retail, spanning multiple varied services, with different promotions and offers needed to match time of year and weather. They needed a campaign that could adapt, flex and tackle anything. A campaign that could be a one-stop shop for any message, and that could make them the one-stop shop for any motoring or cycling need. From puncture repair kits to complete services and MOTs.
The campaign was planned to launch for Winter, a key time of year for MOTs, services, and a host of more practical car maintenance tasks including batteries, bulbs and wiper blades. Not products or services that could be seen as glamorous, they are more needs than wants, but all of them make your motoring life easier. The work we created allowed us to push that fact, people don’t want a new battery but they did want to know they car would start first time on a freezing cold morning. We turned practical, dare I say slightly boring, to-dos into the things you really wanted.
With this type of account we’d often have 3 or 4 campaigns running at once, they all have to feel part of the same brand but stand alone across advertising and in-store. ‘You Want…’ gave us a construct with both familiarity as well as flex. Beefing up or pulling back the emotion, price or service message as needed in each step of the consumer journey.
It also worked with different look and feels, including standard product cut-outs, which all stayed connected through the design structures and templates we created. Allowing for super-fast roll-out and a consistent customer experience.
As the campaign developed in it’s second year, we introduced a rhyming style. Launching with a brand TV ad featuring the face of Formula 1 Steve Jones, before rolling out into wider products and services.
From winning the pitch during lockdown to present day we’ve produced a lot of work for Halfords, with lots of special projects thrown in. Rebrands, product launches and promoting their sponsorship of the British Touring Car Championship being just a few, with some purely social campaigns in the mix too.
We always had our eyes open for more unique uses of media, like the weather reactive posters below, there was a suite of these positioned on roadsides tackling every winter weather condition.
