Taylor Herring turns 25: Pete Mountstevens celebrates his 25 favourite campaigns

For a quarter of a century, Taylor Herring has operated on a simple premise: if a brand wants to survive, it has to entertain.

To mark the occasion, Pete Mountstevens, creative lead, rounds up its standout creative moments.

From turning high-street staples like Greggs and Aldi into cultural phenomena to crafting viral moments for political elites, Taylor Herring campaigns have been generating attention for, well, 25 years.

What began as a scrappy entertainment start-up has evolved into one of the UK's most decorated creative PR powerhouses. Now, armed with a fresh brand identity, leadership under CEO Sam Corry, and the backing of Publicis Groupe, the agency is entering its next chapter.

As Taylor Herring celebrates its milestone, it looks back at 25 years of making brands famous and how it’s adapted to an era of infinite scroll.

1. The ‘Real Crown Jewels’ – The Oddballs Foundation

A multi-award-winning slice of old-school TH, turning a well-known euphemism into a national talking point around testicular cancer for The Oddballs Foundation.

Fun fact: Our first effort at the jewel-encrusted testicles and this whole campaign was very nearly binned.

2. Sausage Roll Jesus – Greggs

The one that very nearly got us fired! We created the first Greggs advent calendar and thought it would be a great idea to replace Jesus with an image of a classic Greggs sausage roll in the 25th window.

Cue religious bodies going into meltdown and the TH staffers getting their tin hats on pronto…

Fun fact: Lord Jesus backwards is… SUSEJ DROL – eat it folks!

3. Washing Machine: The Movie – Samsung

An arthouse movie featuring nothing more than laundry going around in the drum with a soundtrack from feted (and deadly serious) classical composer Michael Nyman.

We premiered our film at the Odeon Leicester Square, where 150 bewildered cinema guests watched a Samsung spin cycle for 88 minutes.

We also sent TV viewers into a spin with an entire ad-break takeover during C4’s Gogglebox, where millions watched our washing machine go round and round.

Was it art? Was it a joke? We may never know – but sales of Samsung’s QuickDrive washing machine went skyward.

Fun Fact: This campaign is the most highly awarded work in TH history to date.

4. Aldeh – Aldi

Celebrating Oasis's return with a cheeky Mancunian rebrand. 

Fun fact: Liam loved it and shared it, as did millions of others – so much so that Aldeh is now a permanent rebrand.

5. The Lonely Bounty – Mars

The best example of a campaign that was rooted in the simple premise that it’s easier to join a conversation than to start one.

Xmas was coming up, and as always, there was a ton of social chatter ranking seasonal chocolates, with Bounty being the most divisive choc in the tub. Cue limited-edition Bounty-less tubs, a Bounty return scheme and a festive advert where a lonely Bounty falls in love with an equally maligned Brussels sprout.

Fun fact: Our low-budget seasonal ad was voted one of the top 50 best festive adverts of all time in a C5 poll.

Fun fact 2: Our executive creative director, Lora Martyr, sings the theme tune.

Fun fact 3: The estate of Richard Curtis tried to sue us for copyright infringement, to no avail…

6. ‘My Body, My Rights’ – Amnesty International

A global creative campaign to bring sexual and reproductive rights issues to the fore. 

We flew to Tokyo to work with emerging artist Hikaru Cho, who uses the human body as a canvas for her amazing art. Each artwork depicted a different aspect of sexual and reproductive rights.

7. Polar Bear – Sky Fortitude

A super-lifelike polar bear on the Tube! What’s not to like? 

An elaborate launch campaign for the Sky thriller series ‘Fortitude’ set in the Arctic.

Fun fact: Everyone thought this was an animatronic polar bear at the time. It was actually a hugely elaborate puppet controlled by two performers from War Horse inside the costume.

8. Jacob Rees-Mogg – The Beano

We can’t have been the only ones who noticed that Tory politico JRM had copied Walter the Softy’s entire style playbook. We issued him with a mischievous legal ‘cease and desist’ letter and watched as the story went global…

9. Jockey on the Uffington Horse – Paddy Power

Our first work for Paddy Power. Cheltenham was on the horizon, so we stole a march on the competition by lobbing a jockey on the Uffington Horse. 

The installation was entirely guerrilla, carried out under cover of darkness. 

This was pre-drone, so we were up in a chopper shooting this at the crack of dawn before we were rumbled by the National Trust.

Fun fact: The Uffington Horse may not, in fact, be a horse at all (but never let the facts get in the way of a good story).

Fun fact 2: These were the days when it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission…

10. The Real Mr Darcy – UKTV Drama

Mr Darcy had always been played by tall, dark and handsome actors, but how true a representation was this of the original character described in the book? 

We engaged a courtroom artist to sketch ‘the real Mr Darcy’ as described by Austen herself – the resulting picture story made global news.

Fun fact: We’ve also created a life-size Mr Darcy cake and a huge Mr Darcy public art installation in the Serpentine.

11. The Celery Bag – Aldi

It’s Fashion Week and Moschino has just released a bag priced at £1.5k that looks suspiciously like a bunch of celery. 

Cue our TH creative avengers assembling at lightning speed to create our very own Aldi version (a stick of celery) for a mere 75p. 

High-street fashion meets the middle aisle, folks – and yes, celery sales went up.

12. Dad Dancing – Thorpe Park

A dad caught going through a cringeworthy repertoire of dad dancing moves at a teen festival goes viral, racking up 12 million organic views in five days.

Thorpe Park was hosting a summer-long pop festival for under-18s, and there was just one problem: the parents, who would invariably stick around and ruin the kids’ cool.

Our solution? 

We installed bespoke ‘dad dancing pens’ at the back of the arena. We promoted the initiative by seeding out some camera footage of a dire dad dancer at one of the events.

Fun fact: Our dad dancer was straight from central casting, and we put him into hiding once the story broke, as every single media outlet wanted to interview him.

13. Crème Egg Sub – Subway

So wrong it’s right. 

Two icons of the high street colliding in a glorious Easter mash-up. Gooey, divisive and utterly irresistible.

14. Crouchy Conducts the Classics – Paddy Power

Witty terrace chants given the Xmas carol treatment with a full choir and orchestra conducted by Peter Crouch – a seasonal campaign to mark the first-ever Xmas World Cup. 

The album, which also featured Paul Potts, reached No. 2 on the classical music charts, with the profits all going to charity.

Fun fact: Mark Lawrenson plays cymbals on a few tracks.

15. Choc Side Up or Choc Side Down? – McVitie’s

A classic respin of the ‘It’s official, you are doing it all wrong’ type of story. Turns out that McVitie’s Choc Digestives are supposed to be eaten choc side down – who knew?

16. Hawking Talking – Professor Stephen Hawking Predicts the World Cup

We somehow managed to persuade Professor Stephen Hawking to devise a scientific formula for how England might win a World Cup. We launched it with a press conference at the Savoy. The room was packed. Newsnight were there. Jeremy Paxman was holding the mic.

On cue, Professor Hawking was wheeled out to our intro music of choice… ‘Firestarter’ by the Prodigy… complete with pyrotechnics.

17. Colours of Carnival in Lockdown – Samsung

We took the nation’s favourite street festival online for the first time in its 54-year history, after COVID-19 forced the physical event to be cancelled. 

Our campaign used Samsung’s 8K technology to create over 60 short films celebrating the dancers, musicians, costume designers and food that make Carnival special.

18. A Dragon Skull Washes Up on a Beach – Game of Thrones

Installed under cover of darkness on Charmouth Beach (the Jurassic Coast), we left the early-morning dog walkers and fossil hunters to discover our giant skull.

Fun fact: we initially thought this was a disaster, as coverage was very slow – but over the course of a week, it went global. PHEW.

19. Sharknado in a Fish Shop – Sharknado on DVD

A timeless classic ‘hidden camera’ style video from the TH vaults, where unsuspecting shoppers browsing the cod fillets are attacked by a fibreglass shark nestling amongst the ice.

20. Victor Meldrew Found in Space! – UKTV

My favourite TH silly-season story of all time, and one of our first big splashes. 

The brief was to promote a comedy season on UKTV Gold which featured the comedy classic One Foot in the Grave.

We found an astronomer willing to chart the Victor Meldrew constellation and, hey presto – no one could believe it!

21. The World’s First Breast Milk Ice Cream – The Icecreamists

Introducing ‘Baby Gaga’ – the world’s first breast milk ice cream, launched by the renegade London ice cream parlour The Icecreamists in 2011. A real product, made with donated breast milk, Madagascan vanilla, and lemon zest, it came with a £14 price tag and global headlines.

Fun fact: Lady Gaga threatened to sue us – we took no notice.

22. Prehistoric Landscape Art – Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet

The one where we used a series of prehistoric locations as the canvas for a set of groundbreaking, eco-friendly artworks. We travelled across the USA and Finland before ending on the UK’s Jurassic Coast.

Fun fact: We created all the art using charcoal and chalk, and it washed away after the first rainfall.

23. Captain on a Billboard – easyJet

Promoting pilot recruitment for easyJet by installing real-life Captain Sarah Ackerley into a seat on a London billboard, where passers-by could ask questions and interact with her.

Our installation challenged gender stereotypes and misconceptions about becoming a pilot, while directing people via QR code to an online aptitude test designed to inspire the next generation of pilots.

24. Flybraries – easyJet

Getting kids to swap screens for stories over the summer holidays.

We turned the seat-back pockets of thousands of easyJet planes into mini libraries, stocking them with children’s books to encourage young travellers to put down their devices and get lost in a good old-fashioned story.

25. Life’s Little Moments – Samsung

And finally, to demonstrate just how far we’ve evolved creatively as an agency over the past 25 years, a major commercial campaign we recently created for Samsung. 

A cinematic, emotionally driven story that captures a lifetime of family moments in a single journey, as an expectant father travels to the hospital for the birth of his first child. Probably my favourite of all the films we’ve made, it demonstrates our ability to deliver powerful brand storytelling at scale.

Bonus campaign! Paddy Power – Daft Punk Gatecrash the Brits!

‘Get Lucky’ was the song of the year, and we got lucky when security fell for our Paddy Power doppelgangers at The Brit Awards. 

Our mystery duo got as far as the red carpet before they whipped off their trousers to reveal their Paddy Power Lucky Pants – before being unceremoniously thrown out.

Fun fact: Current CEO Sam Corry is one half of the band here.

Fun fact 2: We used a snapper with a very long lens to shoot the AAA passes the crew were wearing, then replicated them via a top London forger.

All images and campaign videos supplied by Taylor Herring.