Vanguard
Vanguard wanted to create awareness of their expertise in active investing, and to target UK financial advisers. They already had the idea of doing a Tough Mudder event, but wanted our help to get people excited and sign up to it.
I worked with Lizzy (Senior Copywriter) at AML on this brief. At first we were stuck with how we could persuade people to get dirty and electric shocked. Then we thought about the nature of investing and how competitive the industry can be to win. We used this as our hook. Deliberately teasing the egos of UK financial advisers by asking them if they were as active as Vanguard and the only way they could prove it was seeing them at the starting line.
The campaign was very successful – “The results were undeniable. 4% of the entire UK adviser population took part, with ~1,400 event sign-ups (8% above target) and nearly 1,000 participants—including 627 potential new prospects. The campaign drove Vanguard’s highest-ever unprompted ad recall among advisers, reaching 19% in Q3 2023 (up from 11% in Q4 2022).”
It won Grand Winner 2025 for Strategic Campaign at the NYX Awards.
To really exaggerate how active Vanguard were, I wanted the art direction to look as if these guys were literally training for it on their lunch breaks.
We worked with the talented photographer, Henrik Knudsen, to help us bring this idea to life.
We took inspiration from the lighting set-ups used for athletes in sport, and got the models covered in ‘mud’.
