BTS: How Hawkstone won Britain’s Got Talent

Exclusive: We spoke to T&P the agency behind the Hawkstone Farmers’ Choir

A choir of working farmers, first put together to sing a beer ad that was designed to be banned, became the first choir ever to win Britain’s Got Talent.

The agency behind it, T&P, insists it never set out to enter — let alone win.

On 30 May, the Hawkstone Farmers’ Choir won the nineteenth series of Britain’s Got Talent, with drone-display act Celestial in second.

Their final number, an original song called “This Is Home,” was watched live by 4.1 million people and decided by public vote. No choir had ever won the show before.

The route there is the interesting part.

The group (34 working farmers) was first assembled by Jeremy Clarkson’s beer brand Hawkstone, and its agency T&P, for an ad made to be banned: a straight-faced take on the “Flower Duet” from Lakmé, pints in hand, with the lyrics swapped for something no broadcaster would touch.

T&P says it auditioned more than 500 singing farmers to cast it. ‘Pulled’ from TV and radio, the ad did its real numbers online.

Most people in the industry tend to eye-roll at a banned ad, and fairly — they’re usually engineered to get pulled so the brand can crow about being too hot for TV.

What’s harder to wave away here is what happened next. The choir didn’t quietly wander off once the stunt had run its course.

From the farm gate to primetime

So how does an act created for a beer campaign end up entering, and winning, a live ITV talent show?

According to T&P’s global chief creative officer André Moreira, there was no secret deal or production arrangement he says. “It was an incredible opportunity that landed on our doorstep.”

On his account, BGT’s producers saw the banned ad, recognised the story, and invited the choir to audition. Amanda Holden’s golden buzzer sent them through to the semi-finals.

Moreira is generous about where the credit lands.

“Hawkstone was the enabler, the spark, but the farmers were, and always will be, the stars,” he says. The public, he argues, knew the choir came from the Hawkstone world and voted for the singing and the story anyway.

More than a lager ad

There’s a charity element too.

Rather than start something new, Hawkstone partnered with SHOUT, which runs a free, confidential 24/7 text-messaging service to support struggling farmers who need to talk.

The choir’s performance was released as a charity single to raise money for it, and there’s a dedicated keyword: text HAWKSTONE to 85258 to reach a trained volunteer. Moreira says it has prompted hundreds of conversations so far.

That framing was front and centre on the night.

“This is for all the farmers out there,” choir lead Katryna Shell said as the win was announced. “If you’re not OK, speak up.”

The numbers

By Hawkstone’s account, the campaign has been “the rocket fuel” behind doubling sales to just under £45 million and getting the beer into more than 4,000 pubs.

The Hawkstone Farmers Choir

It puts the original banned ad at over 176 million impressions and the BGT run at more than £6.6 million in earned media. “And now that they’ve gone and won the whole bloody thing,” Moreira says, “that snowball is an avalanche.”

The thread it keeps returning to is the supply chain: more beer sold means more British barley bought, which it links to a £2.7 million investment in reviving the British hops industry “after sixty years of decline.”

That, the brand says, is why farmers have got behind it.

How it was run

The mechanics were less glamorous than the result. Hawkstone leaned on a social community it puts at over 1.1 million, then “gave them a cause to rally behind” — a sustained social push, viewing parties in pubs, thousands of bumper stickers, and an insert in Farmers Weekly to bring the wider farming community along. No big media buy, says Moreira: “you can’t put a price on something like this.”

The credits

The choir itself takes top billing — real farmers, not actors. Beyond them: BGT’s producers, who offered the platform; SHOUT, the charity partner; and Hawkstone co-founders Jeremy Clarkson and Johnny Hornby. The creative and production work sat with T&P, with Moreira and senior producer Alfie Glover-Short among those involved. Glover-Short watched the final next to Clarkson. “All the strategy fell away,” he says, “and it was just pure joy.”

A choir of farmers, a banned ad, and a primetime trophy. However you measure it, it’s a long way from the farm gate.