Dave and CALM replace usual ad break with comedy festival
By Staff on Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Yesterday UKTV channel Dave in partnership with Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) ran a comedy festival during a full ad break to encourage their viewers to think about friendship.
At 9.12pm during Taskmaster, instead of the usual ad break, the channel aired a group of 17 comedians sharing funny anecdotes about friendship. This specialised ad slot was developed to support male friendship urging viewers to text a friend who is going through a tough time and to help tackle male depression and suicide – the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK.
The activation is a continuation of Dave’s 2018 ‘Be The Mate You’d Want’ campaign, which ran in Dave’s airtime, print ads, radio channels and social media. It was made by UKTV’s in-house creative team and coincided with International Friendship Day, which was on Tuesday 30th July.
Luke Hales, Dave’s channel director, said: “We want to use Dave’s reach to encourage people to get in touch with friends who need a reminder that someone is thinking of them and someone cares. The Comedy Festival in an Ad Break is a unique Dave way of doing this.”
Simon Gunning, chief executive of Calm, added: “We’re delighted to bring the next exciting phase of the ‘Be The Mate You’d Want’ campaign with Dave and UKTV to life.
The comedians involved include: Ahir Shah, Alex Horne, Dane Baptiste, Darren Harriott, David Mumeni, Ed Gamble, Elf Lyons, Jamali Maddix, Jessie Cave, Lou Sanders, Maisie Adam, Natasia Demetriou, Phil Wang, Pierre Novelli, Sindhu Vee, Stevie Martin and Zoe Lyons.
@MuirJennie
