Episode 147 - Yorkshire Tea / Skipton Alfie “Pack Yer Bags” Reviewed by Cisco
🍵 It’s tea time on Advertisers Watching Ads… and not just any brand, but Yorkshire Tea!
The latest ad chosen by Contagious is a song called Pack Yer Bags by Skipton Alfie. This cheeky “TikTok rap” clip seems to be in line with the brand’s irreverent approach to marketing. It was certainly a hit with our guest this week, Tom Webster (EMEA Paid Social Media Manager at Cisco).
Watch it, sing along, and tell us what you thought of this ad created by Lucky Generals and Ninja Tune.
Episode 147 - Yorkshire Tea / Skipton Alfie “Pack Yer Bags” Reviewed by Cisco
Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads.
Tom Ollerton 0:19
My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. We're a creative effectiveness platform. But this week, we are going to be watching an ad by Yorkshire Tea. But before we see this, let's meet this week's one and only special guest.
Tom Webster 0:33
I'm Tom Webster. I run Paid Social for Cisco in EMEA. I'm also the entire marketing department at DMC Brewery, a craft brewery based in Leeds, which might be relevant to today's ad.
Tom Ollerton 0:46
It might... Let's see it.
Tom Ollerton 3:23
Right, and marks out of five on a scale of one to five...
Tom Webster 3:26
Five. It's a, it's a five. It's really good. Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 3:29
Right. Tom, what is going on? Yorkshire Tea... Fun, brilliant video, but what's the wider campaign at play?
Tom Webster 3:37
First thing on this is it's kind of annoying that you brought me this ad because half the fun of doing these is getting to be mean about people's creative, and I can't because this is a really nice, really nice ad. So unfortunately, I can't be mean about it. But I can tell on this one, it looks like it might be a pure organic play. I have not seen this outside of the Yorkshire Tea Instagram and TikTok and YouTube accounts. It doesn't seem like it's actually on their website. I've not seen it anywhere else outside digital so it might just be something that they've gone and made on the pure streak for the creative to go viral for a particular audience. But I might have missed it. Obviously, I'm probably not in the right demographic being quite old. Maybe I'm too, too old to be targeted by this ad. Straight up organic play, which is unusual in these days.
Tom Ollerton 4:26
What was the insight here?
Tom Webster 4:27
Yorkshire Tea have always done like quite quirky ads based on, you know, the Yorkshire location and, and that kind of thing. They do a lot of music-based stuff, and they did a big song about Yorkshire Tea a couple of years ago, whereas this one is very much like, like TikTok rap, which is, I'd say, an unusual place for a tea brand. But for Yorkshire Tea, who have this history of being slightly more interesting, a little bit more, you know, creative based and hitting that kind of audience. But it doesn't come on completely out of nowhere. But you know, for people going on holiday, taking, taking tea with you, that does seem like it is something that a lot of people do because you can't get a decent brew in the Balearics or anywhere else. And yeah, they've noticed that and they've made a lovely song about it. So that's what's happened.
Tom Ollerton 5:12
Do you think it's too long?
Tom Webster 5:14
No. It's not long enough. It's really good because it's not really an ad. It's a music video. It looks like it's... Yeah, sponsored content. It also follows that sort of, what's it called... The heartbeat structure of social media ads where, you know, you've got interesting, interesting brand and then you do some more interesting, interesting stuff. And then you got the brand again. And then, once you get, I think the brand only pops up 22 seconds in. But because it's such a, an interesting advert because it's not an advert, because it's a music video and genuinely the music is quite... I'm possibly a sucker for rap in a regional UK accent. I think that's great that I'm quite happy to watch the first 22 seconds without clicking away from it to get to that brand. All the little skits that go through it, I'm quite happy to watch for the duration. I, you know, if they did a five minute version, I'd have probably stuck around for that as well.
Tom Ollerton 6:07
So I think the one thing sort of like, a little bit wobbly for me is like, there's drugs, sex references and sexism all sort of like... That's the joke, isn't it? Like, you know, the whole bit about, "Do you wanna come back to mine for beverage and then dip it in like... You know, it's 2023, like, how did you respond to those bits? Or they just washed over you?
Tom Webster 6:26
It washed over me because it was, it's clearly like a character. That's not a good brand saying that, it is the character of Skipton Alfie, who, I originally... I was like googling, I was like, oh this is clearly some TikTok rap guy that I'm too old to know about who's probably done like 20 videos about things happening in Yorkshire. And they grabbed him and made him do this ad. So that's why I thought, you know, the whole little bits of, you know, drugs and sex that are in there are so tongue in cheek that I didn't see as a major issue at all.
Tom Ollerton 6:58
So what I would love to know... How did you get from concept to sign off, right? Because someone comes in a room and go, "We're gonna go have this wide boy character from Yorkshire and he's going to rap about tea. It's going to be like 5 minutes long. What do you think?" How on earth did they mock it up?
Tom Webster 7:14
I assume it was a fairly open brief. Yorkshire Tea have done songs in the past. "Do us another song but this time, go for a younger audience and this concept behind it, it's people taking tea on holiday." They've given the creative agency a, you know, carte blanche to go and do something. But I think they might have put on there, if you can make it go viral, that'd be wonderful. And that's what they've gone away and done. And I'm hoping that this is the first version that they brought to Yorkshire Tea and Yorkshire Tea just said, "Yeah, this is absolutely fine. We'll, we're going to run with this and didn't make any changes to it." The bit about the phone being stupid o'clock, if you pause this ad at any moment, there's a lot going on. The people who did the set design on this have put a ton of effort into it, like this, the posters in the background... When he's getting harassed by security, like, there's pictures of tea bags on there. There's a little beans on toast on his keyring. There's tons of stuff happening. So this has got repeat viewing potential.
Tom Ollerton 8:07
Yeah, and I, I also have a pet theory that in the last year, like the world's been relatively grim place, like you know, wars and A.I. taking over everything, recessions, cost of living, like, it's bad news. I can understand why this is very appealing. The whole Barbie thing went bananas like kind of sunshine and happy pink like alternative reality seems to work really well. And I think that's what they've tapped into here. "Shout out Lorraine!" It's brilliant. The fact that was even allowed to get, go into the, the edit was fantastic.
Tom Webster 8:35
It's great. I'm not annoyed to watch it multiple times, even, like, annoying sort of stuff that only social media managers like me care about. You could cut this vertically. You could see it as a vertical video. There's nothing which is happening on either side of the frame that needs to be there. So it works in multiple formats. Yeah, it's, it's great. Well, well done, everybody who is involved in this one.
Tom Ollerton 8:56
Right. Okay. So would you sign this off in its current form? Thumbs up or down?
Tom Webster 9:01
I'd say yes, and do another one.
Tom Ollerton 9:03
Oh, right. Well, that was fun, wasn't it, Tom?
Tom Webster 9:04
It was nice and easy.
Tom Ollerton 9:05
We'll see you all next week.
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