Black & Decker

The Brief:

To promote the Mouse sander by Black & Decker using TV and other media if necessary.

The Solution:

The first thing I decided is that I would not use any mice in my concept. Obvious. Not relevant. Boring.

During my research I found that the sander wasn’t being advertised to it’s target audience. This sander is much smaller and easier to use compared to the rest of the market and a lot of women and D.I.Y beginners were picking this up as their first power tool.

After testing the product out for myself I noticed that, unlike most sanders, your hand isn’t still vibrating 5 minutes after you’ve finished. This sander is kind to your hands. It almost helps your hands…the tagline was born:

Black & Decker: Helping hands

TV:

Now to make a TV advert. I started to think a lot about how much our hands go through. The have such a tough time! If something is thrown at you, your poor hand goes out to take the blow. If you want to hit something, your hand will take the pain for you.

This idea would form the TV ad. It would show a number of scenarios in which hands are treated unfairly. By personifying the hands and giving them feelings, I felt it appropriate for them to wince and yelp when they are injured.

The advert would show hands getting burnt, doing up buttons in the cold, getting a splinter, cutting nails too short with guillotine sfx, being washed with drowning sfx, being put in a glove with gasping sfx. There would then be a shot of a shed and a hand would be terrified, knowing that it’s going to be subject to power tools and splintering wood. The screen goes black and only a whooshing sound is heard. We are then presented with a happy little hand whizzing past on a Mouse sander making happy squeaks. Finally, the sander zooms into shot and screaches to a halt and the tagline ‘Helping Hands’ appears.

TV Storyboard

Web:

To help out the unfortunate individuals who’s hands are at the mercy of the big bad world, the web will be littered with interactive banners. The user will have to option to remove splinters, soothe burns and put plasters on grazes. The interactive banners will then take the user to the Black & Decker Helping Hands home page where they can find out more.

Here is an example of how one of the banners would look on YouTube.

Outdoor:

In shopping centres and other largely populated places, a ticket challenge will be set up. Members of the public will step into a booth with the task of collecting the tickets whilst they’re being blown around – tickets mean prizes (think crystal maze). To continue the helping hands theme, they will use a ‘grabber’ to ensure their precious hands aren’t inconvenienced whilst winning free manicures and hand creams as well as tonnes of Black & Decker goodies.

Email:

The email advert will be set out like a child abuse campaign, revealing only at the end that it is for the protection of your own hands. It will read a little something like this:

“They all eventually learn, that no one comes, whether they cry for help or not.

She’s always bumping into things, a door, a table, a fist.

He never tells us anything. He just keeps it all locked up inside, just hoping it will end.

Sometimes we need to open our eyes to the suffering that’s all around us and work together to stop it.

Please visit Helping Hands to see how we can help stop cruelty to our hands.

Lets start, now.”