In a fast-paced world, you can stand out by slowing down.

Recently however, Ronseal has struggled to cut through with its smaller advertising budget.

Last year, we spotted an opportunity in the growing backlash against the fragmentation of attention, in the movement towards ‘Slow TV’:

Norwegian TV has shown 12 hours of knitting and a 134 hour long boat journey that was viewed by half of the Norwegian population. British TV screened a season of slow TV shows including a slow-moving canal boat journey.

So in May last year, Ronseal introduced the UK to ‘slow advertising’.

We would demonstrate how simple it is to protect a fence by painting it with Ronseal’s ‘One Coat Fence Life’, by showing the nation a man painting a fence.

For three minutes.

Silently.

Across an entire advert break, millions of people would watch paint dry.

For three minutes, in the middle of Gogglebox, we got the nation to watch paint dry.

We built intrigue in the run-up to the event by creating four 10” cryptic teasers which ran across Channel 4 and its sister channels for four days leading up to the takeover, encouraging viewers to tune in that Friday at 9:10pm.

To get the nation talking about Ronseal, we ran the advert during Channel 4’s highest rating TV show, ‘Gogglebox’ (a multi-award winning show, which shows real British familes watching and talking about what’s on TV).

Channel 4 used their weekly email newsletter, (sent to 14 million viewers), to tease the campaign on the Friday – the first time this had been used for an advertiser.

Finally, we also created an 11-minute, full fence version of the advert to run on YouTube for people who couldn’t get enough of our relaxing slow advertising.

The campaign was a big sales success. In the most competitive time of year for the DIY market, Ronseal’s sales in May were up 41% year on year. They sold over four million litres of product in May, enough to paint a 1.5m high fence 16,300km long – that’s the distance Cannes to Sydney.

The campaign reached a quarter of the UK population. The extended 11 minute piece of copy was watched online by a further 18,755 views to date, with a 100% completion rate of 32%.

• The campaign hashtags #RonsealAdBreak and #DoesExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin achieved a combined Twitter reach of 35 million.

• Channel 4 campaign carried out a further evaluation which showed:

• 62% net recall

• 73% of recallers liked the break, 63% found it interesting

• Most recallers said they would consider Ronseal after viewing the ad break (57%)

Last year, the British wood-paint brand Ronseal got a quarter of the British population to literally watch paint dry for three minutes during peak time TV.

We took over a whole three minute advert break in one of Britain’s highest rating TV programmes, and showed a man painting a fence, silently, for three minutes, to demonstrate how easy Ronseal is to use.

The campaign reached a further 35 million people online, and helped sell enough Ronseal to paint a fence stretching all the way from Cannes to Sydney.

Just a man, a fence, a brush and a tin of Ronseal.

On the Friday before Mayday Bank Holiday – the time of year where around one-third of the British public traditionally decide to kick-start their summer with a trip to their local DIY superstore - we decided to create our simple, honest, and refreshing slow advert, and give ‘Ronseal One Coat Fence Life’ a chance to do exactly what it says on the tin.

Our slow advert dedicated the entire ad break to a man painting a garden fence for three minutes. No soundtrack, no gimmicks, no special effects, no dialogue.

Just a fixed camera, a man painting a fence, and the gentle background noises of birds tweeting and the occasional barking dog. In a world of hectic TV, three minutes of silence was a powerful – but definitely risky – statement.

Ronseal is a British wood-stain, paint and wood-preservative manufacturer. It’s not exactly glamorous, but in the 1990s it famously turned that to its advantage, with a series of no-nonsense adverts saying “it does exactly what it says on the tin”. This simple, effective statement has become a common part of British popular culture and vernacular.

Recently however, Ronseal has struggled to cut through with its smaller advertising budget, meaning it had a share of voice of just 2% in 2015.

Ronseal’s 2016 business objective was to drive sales of its One Coat Fence Life range. To do this, the marketing objective was to drive awareness and consideration of the range.