Monkey Reborn: What PG Tips Says About New Commercial Arts' New Era

Five years since its formation, and one of WPP's most recent additions, New Commercial Arts (NCA) has been celebrating the landmark, but perhaps with cups of tea rather than champers (or maybe both.) That's because the agency has also just created its first campaign for tea brand PG Tips.

It's the latest example of how the newly-appointed leadership team for the agency has been growing its use of humour, having also produced Nationwide’s biggest rebrand campaign with a series of ads featuring a narcissist bank manager, played by Dominic West.

Perhaps another cause for celebration is that the tea brand has brought its much-loved ambassador Monkey (initially created for ITV Digital before he swung over to PG Tips alongside original partner Johnny Vegas) out of retirement.

Now, the courteous little fella (voiced by comedian Ivo Graham) features in a reality documentary series alongside his wife Alice (Emily Atack), and a whole new career – and brand campaign - has begun.

“The humour category has the power to entertain in a funny way, and I hope this campaign will cheer people up. That is the kind of work that we want to be making – work that really gets talked about and drives a different to the bottom line of the brand,” outlines the agency’s recently promoted chief executive Hannah White.

White believes that bringing the 24-year-old Monkey character back (rather than inventing something new) shows a commitment to celebrating its existing brand equity. “That's what we do in different ways, for all of our clients,” she adds.

A new era for the agency

It's been a hugely successful five years for the agency, which has led NCA to have a game-changing 12 months, after being acquired by Ogilvy last Autumn with co-founder and CEO James Murphy moving to become UK CEO of the new parent network. White subsequently succeeded him at NCA in March, while the rest of the leadership team stepped up at the same time.

That team also includes strategy partner Matt Walters and executive creative directors Steve Hall and Dan Seager, with PG Tips the first account they pitched for together as a team.

The NCA business is now 90 people-strong, and White's mantra is “don’t fuck it up” as she aims to retain the culture that has been developed alongside the breadth and scale of the clients NCA now works with. These include Sainsbury’s, Alzheimer’s Society and restaurant chain Nando’s.

“We’ve always loved working together,” she says of the team. “One of the things that I think we will be looking at is creativity and what that looks like. We’ve spoken a lot about our ambition for that. We’re an amazing business with retained clients at our heart and that is quite unusual for a business our size, but it’s about how you can build a relationship over time, where we can start taking creative opportunities outside of campaigns, and start building those relationships and more of those opportunities.”

Despite the sale, the agency continues to work out of its own offices in London and Glasgow, rather than within Ogilvy UK’s base at Sea Containers House at the side of the Thames, although the team has begun to foster the might of the network to support its work.

The agency specialises in developing populist ads and this PG Tips campaign, described by Seager as “super populist”, proves that ethos will not change.

 “One thing we want to do is probably be a bit more disruptive,” he continues. “We understand that the creative work is ok here, but it can always be bettered. So, for us, it's about trying to find that, whether it’s through trying to be more creative on our pitches or just trying to find those areas within our clients’ work where we can have these little moments.”

White adds that the agency intends to talk more about the effectiveness of its work now that it has long-term data around campaigns created for established clients such as Sainsbury’s, which it has worked with for two years.

With that length of time, the agency is starting to recognise the business metrics attributed to the Sainsbury’s advertising, explains Walters. That is partially through the systems available within Ogilvy and through other data partners

“What Ogilvy offers us, is the opportunity to better bake effectiveness into the whole process,” Walters says. “Effectiveness isn’t just a validation of something we did that worked. It’s about making sure that at every point, what you’re doing is as right as it can be.” Within that is the use of synthetic research and other AI insight tools being developed across the network and the WPP Open platform.

The biggest tea drinkers in the building

The group agrees that their combined tea consumption was a factor in their excitement for working with PG Tips. White and Walters have also experienced working with rival tea brands at former agencies.

“We all, regardless of creative strategy or account management, would bite your arm off to work on PG Tips. Getting to say to my family, ‘Oh yeah, we're working with PG Tips and we're talking about bringing Monkey back'. I don't think it gets more of a dream than that,” White admits, revealing her inner hot beverage geek just a little.

Bringing back Monkey was a question asked by Elle Barker, CMO, Lipton Teas, during the pitch process, who had an instinct that there was more to be squeezed out of the character. The reaction of NCA was an emphatic “yes, absolutely you should,” says Hall.

“But we felt quite strongly that you had to move him on,” continues Hall as he explains why the reality series format around Monkey’s marriage was introduced. “He had to have some reason for coming back. He had to have a reason for where he'd been.”

The team believe that the PG Tips brand has always been one that has participated in the culture of the country, no matter what period, and that when in need, whatever life brings, people would turn to a cuppa. This resulted in ‘Live life one tea at a time’ being introduced as the new brand platform.

Beyond the TV activation, social media will also be a major factor with plenty of content filmed featuring Monkey and Alice that will be distributed through the brand’s owned channels too with the help of partner agencies on the account, PHD and The Romans.

“’Live life one tea at a time’ is hopefully incredibly robust, and will take us into all sorts of places, but also the reality TV concept - who's next door to him? Do we meet his kids? Do they go on holiday? There are a million ways we can take it, there's a myriad of ways which hopefully give it that longevity,” adds White.

And so, through NCA, an advertising legend is reborn, and it looks like he’s here to stay.