top of page

Ancient History

Pre-Internet (but post dinosaurs)

These are just a few of the incredible projects Dakota ran over the years prior in the last millennium! 

PG Tips Olympic Sponsorship

1992

With Brooke Bond Foods as a regular client across a range of brands, it was Dakota that solved the dilemma of what to do with Olympic Sponsorship by creating the Olympic Chimpions, bringing the iconic brand mascot to hundreds of thousands of bags and boxes of teabags just as the nation sat down with a cup of tea to watch the UK win five gold medals in Barcelona.

​

PG Tips.jpg

Thunderbirds

1992

Off the back of negotiating a huge deal for Matchbox Toys with PG Tips, Matchbox approached Dakota with a request for assistance. The manufacturer had failed to sell their latest licenced product to the retail industry and was facing financial hardship and possible failure. Recognizing the potential of the brand, and identifying the anticipated audience figures for the TV show planned to re-run on BBC2, Dakota put together a limited edition reader offer with BBC Enterprises and in September sold out, kicking off a craze for Thunderbirds that eventually propelled the die-cast toys to No.1 in the toy charts that Christmas that year with Tracy Island runner-up in 1993.

20140403_102030_resized.jpg
Thunderbirds pack shot.png

Dinosaur Dinorama

1993

Following the success of Thunderbirds BBC wanted another project in support of dinosaurs and the smash hit Jurassic Park, but no one could afford the Universal Studios licence fee! Instead, Dakota designed and created a play environment for dinosaurs and Dinosaur Dinorama was born. Available through partnership with BBC Enterprises, the toy was also sold through independent retail and some major retailers, topping the young reader opinion poll conducted that year by The Daily Mirror!

20140403_102312.jpg
Dinorama product shot.png

National Press Reader Campaigns

1994 -1999

It was a classic case of the underdog prepared to take risks the market leader didn’t need to. The Daily Express approached Dakota to create an added value promotional strategy that wouldn’t cost the newspaper a fortune it didn’t have when competing against the deep pockets of Associated Newspapers. Within weeks the first project was launched, followed in quick succession by two more: ‘FREE paperbacks for every reader’, ‘FREE D-Day Commemorative Book’, and ‘FREE AA Road Atlas’. The client expected six thousand orders. The first promotion achieved 230,000 orders. Thereafter the industry was lining up to run projects. Special mention goes to the News of the World who ran with ‘FREE Sex Books for every reader’. Circulation went up over 3% - for the biggest selling newspaper in the world. Now that was real success!

Express 94.png

Duni Super Soakers

1995

A hugely successful toy in the US, and a fun promotion to sell to the client, Britain was slow to catch on to Super Soakers which gave us a great opportunity. Offered as an added value gift for trade customers, Duni sold out of stock faster than anyone expected, and the theme tied in perfectly with the client’s own product: napkins for catering businesses.

Duni packshot.png

Daily Telegraph Judgement 

1995-6

1994 saw the growth of the internet grow exponentially, and the media industry knew better than most. The number of sites was exploding, home ownership of PCs was growing fast, and journalists were posting news articles at an incredible pace. For the Daily Telegraph, who wanted to be a key influencer in technology, they created the Electronic Telegraph, the first on-line newspaper, and following the launch the newspaper commissioned Dakota to run a series of high-profile consumer projects to bring added value benefits for its PC owning readership.

With a launch date in 1996 work began the year before to bring together a deal to give complete computer games away for free, as a covermount, on the special promotional magazine Judgement, commissioned and edited by Dakota. Hugely successful for the Electronic Telegraph, Judgement shifted 74,000 copies in its first week.

Judgement 2005_edited.jpg
Judgement 1004_edited.jpg
Judgement 2005_edited.jpg

Empower
Growth

Microsoft
Media Marketing

1995-1997

Back in the 90’s a call from Microsoft was the equivalent of a call from Mount Olympus. The brief – 1. Get publicity but we have no additional advertising budget. 2. Reduce the cost of business lead generation.

We responded with a programme of media marketing deals with major newspapers and trade publications, running reader competitions to launch MSN. It worked a treat. Next, we ran lead generation competitions for Windows SBS in the specialist trade press and brought the cost of lead generation down from £60 per qualified lead to £0.50, (and this was to help build internet connectivity). Office 96 and other products benefited from the same treatment over the next three years.

Microsoft Office 97.png

Yikes PC

1999

The project that brought Dakota low, Yikes was conceived to bring home computing to the masses. With PC penetrations stuck at 32% and consumers expecting their hardware to be as durable as a Volvo, growth in the UK had slowed to replacement. So, our proposal to lease PCs to consumers at a time when not even cars could be leased (long before the rise of PCP financing) was approved by Mr. Gates himself. Everything was going smoothly until eight weeks before launch when… well that is another story. But Yikes would have heralded a revolution in Britain that had to wait for another decade and a more conventional approach.

20140403_101908_edited.jpg
Yikes content.png

Honourable Mention

These are only some of the promotions and marketing projects we undertook. There are others that could have been included but for a lack of material to demonstrate the work we did. One noticeable project has its own separate case study - Celebrity Cola.  

A great promotion we pitched was to Golden Wonder, and among their portfolio was Nik Naks corn snacks. Something of an outlier in the snacking market, the brand identified very strongly with Gen X (remember them in their youth!). Our brief was to devise a promotion that would cost very little but generate sales for the brand which was always fighting for distribution and publicity in a crowded shelf space.

I'll be Back, for my Nik Nak.

We came back to them with a fun and radical sales promotion proposition. Among the icons associated with Gen X was Terminator, and the promotional offer and POS took design cues from the cyborg. No artwork remains of this pitch, but it was a sure-fire hit – collecting empty Nik Nak packets to redeem for a ping-pong ball air blaster! As a self-funding project, it would have destroyed the competition in the same way the book promotions had swept the newspaper industry, or Duni had cleaned up in the retail trade with Super Soakers.

But then the client lawyers decided it was dangerous to hand a child’s toy (CE approved) to teenagers and the project was quashed. Coming off the back of the successful Duni project (see above) it was clear that it would have smashed sales records for the brand and won huge distribution gains. As it was, the management buyout of Golden Wonder lasted five short journeymen years.

bottom of page