Creative Corner: Jaffa Cakes' (second) total eclipse, a giant hair ball in NYC and Crewe Aleksandr. Simples.

Creative Corner: The weird, the nostalgic and the downright ‘simples’.

We’re back. Baked, parched and very hot, and while the UK may be suffering from a drought, there has been no shortage of creative juices flowing this summer. 

This week I’ve picked out three brands that have identified a simple insight and taken it somewhere unexpected.

From a Jaffa Cake taking a bite out of a solar eclipse, to a hair brand K18 rolling a giant ball of hair through New York, and a meerkat temporarily renaming a football club. Between them, these campaigns use hooks of nostalgia, the downright bizarre and, in the case of Crewe Alexsandr, gloriously silly.

Sometimes you don’t need to overthink it. You just need to give people something worth talking about.

Jaffa Cakes takes a bite out of the solar eclipse

You’d have to have been living under a stone if you hadn’t got swept up in the total eclipse euphoria this week.

Aside from colander brands, who surely should have jumped on a once-in-a-generation moment to join in with the national hysteria, there’s really only one brand that should be getting involved when the moon, an eclipse and a round orange thing come together. And Jaffa Cake didn’t disappoint.

In homage to its iconic “Full Moon, Half Moon” campaign, the ‘cake’ gave one of advertising’s most memorable product demonstrations a timely new outing with a clever little twist.

Rather than rerun the original 1999 campaign, which turned eating a Jaffa Cake into a lesson in lunar science, 25 years later, the brand simply added the words “Go On Say It’ to an Outside Back Cover print ad in the Metro, which quickly spread to social media.

A perfect piece of nostalgia that got those of us who can remember the original TV ad reciting the words out loud whilst the question posed created enough intrigue for younger meme-hungry folk.

Full moon. Half moon. Total eclipse. Full circle.

K18 rolls out one giant hairball

Bizarre, gross, just plain weird? All words you could use to describe K18’s stunt, by Uncommon New York, that got the people of NYC talking.

A cross between a tumbleweed and a particularly unfortunate trip to the hairdresser, the hair brand created a giant ball of hair and rolled it through the streets of New York.

Dubbed Tumblehair, the 10-foot-wide, 150-pound ball of real and synthetic hair represents the 161 billion strands of hair New Yorkers could collectively retain each year by, of course, using K18’s FutureIQ longevity serum.

Constructed from hair sourced from salons across New York, gross, and painstakingly hand-styled, sewn and assembled, Tumblehair has been pushed through streets, parks and alleys by a crew of five.

I repeat. It’s weird. It’s tactile. It’s slightly gross. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of stunt that makes people stop, stare and reach for their phones.

When your brand promise is about keeping hold of your hair, what better way to demonstrate it than keeping hold of 161 billion strands of it?

Crewe Alexandra gets a ‘simples’ rebrand

What do you get when a football club, a price comparison site and a famous meerkat walk into the same room?

Crewe Alexsandr.

For the opening week of the English Football League season, Crewe Alexandra temporarily changed its name to Crewe Alexsandr. Can you see what they did there?

Heralding a new partnership between the EFL and Compare the Market, the club even swapped its traditional crest for one featuring the instantly recognisable golden mug of Aleksandr Orlov. Obviously, it’s temporary. The original Crewe Alexandra name and crest will return after the week-long stunt.

With new kits, badge/crest refreshes and brand makeovers commonplace at the start of the new season, it’s a simple yet clever hack, turning the sort of brand integration that could have been painfully corporate into something wonderfully silly. They even rolled out club legend Dean Ashton at the unveiling.

It’s a reminder that sponsorship doesn’t always have to mean sticking a logo on a hoarding.

Crewe Alexsandr. Simples.

That's it for this week's Creative Corner!

Remember, if you’ve seen something that’s caught your eye, or if you’ve been working on something you’re particularly proud of, please do get in touch via paul.lucas@fanclubpr.com. I’d love to hear about it.