Thursday 6th April 2017

UKTV tomorrow launches a campaign for the fourth series of Dave's award-winning comedy game show Taskmaster with advertising designed by the famous contestants themselves. In line with the central premise of the show: to accept challenges by the Taskmaster (Greg Davies) and his assistant (Alex Horne), the show line up - Noel Fielding, Lolly Adefope, Mel Giedroyc, Hugh Dennis and Joe Lycett - were presented with a 48 sheet billboard, a wealth of art and crafts supplies, and a note saying:

Dave has put you in control of its advertising. Design the billboard for the new series. You have 30 minutes - your time starts now.

UKTV Creative, the broadcaster's in-house creative design shop, then produced a series of on- and off-air assets for the campaign, using the task footage and completed artworks.

The resulting campaign will run across UKTV owned-airtime, plus commercials on ITV and Channel 4 digital channels, broadcaster VOD, Facebook Canvas and digital and static billboards. An exclusive "making the advertising" programme short for the free TV streaming service, UKTV Play featuring Greg Davies, Alex Horne and each of the contestants.

UKTV Senior Marketing Manager, Cherie Cunningham, said,

Our marketing team started with the insight that viewers quickly become fans of the show when they see a task being played out. So UKTV Creative came up with the concept of making the ad campaign for the show a task in itself, and Avalon who produce the show kindly gave us access to create a whole bespoke short of the task for UKTV Play. We enormously appreciate Alex, Greg, Lolly, Hugh, Mel, Noel and Joe for taking part with such enthusiasm, creating a range of creative that stands out and demands attention."

It will be up to the fans to decide who is crowned the winner of the task. The social media campaign centres on a vote for the best billboard attempt, with the winner announced ahead of the first episode airing on Tuesday 25th April. Following this it is the audience themselves who will be completing the tasks in a fan engagement strategy that runs for the duration of the series. Each week a new fan task will be set via Dave's Facebook and Twitter, with each winner getting a voucher for a free takeaway just in time to watch the show.

Footage of the contestants' reaction to receiving their first task and how they interpreted the mission forms the content for on-air promos, and the five-minute short that will be available to watch exclusively on UKTV Play. Each piece opens with hosts Davies and Horne introducing the new series and explaining the task.

Dave's Taskmaster continues to grow, with series three averaging 875k viewers, up 24% series-on-series. The programme is also extremely popular on UKTV Play, with views up 14% series-on-series. The UKTV Original title recently won Best TV Entertainment show in the Great British Comedy Awards, Best TV Comedy Entertainment show in the Chortle Awards and was nominated in the Broadcast Awards, Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, and RTS Programme Awards.

The fourth series of Taskmaster starts on Dave at 9am on Tuesday 25th April. UKTV has also commissioned a fifth series, broadcasting later this year.

CAMPAIGN CREDITS

Project management: Jess Court, Cherie Cunningham
On-air creative: UKTV Creative - Paul Philpott
Off-air creative: UKTV Creative - Paul Philpott, Peter Allison
Promo production: UKTV Creative - Celia Bayne
Promo director: Avalon Television - Andy Devonshire Creative Manager: Paul Philpott
Social Media: UKTV - Erina Jones
Media buying: Rocket

END

NOTES TO EDITORS

About UKTV

UKTV is the biggest multichannel broadcaster in the UK.

The award-winning independent has eleven imaginative brands - UKTV Play, Dave, W, Gold, Alibi, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home, Eden and Good Food. These include the two most popular non-PSB channels in the UK and account for nearly 10% of the British commercial TV market. The company's most recent financial results showed record-breaking year-end revenue of £319m and EBITDA of £82m. It invested £148m in programming and related launches last year, and is becoming an increasingly significant investor in UK creativity.

UKTV has a truly innovative model, curating brand-defining commissions, high-profile acquisitions and the very best of BBC, alongside programmes originally shown on ITV and Channel 4. The network embraces technology to deliver inspired channels to audiences through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk, YouView, Freesat, Amazon Fire and UKTV Play, and distributes its highly valued original programmes to 200 territories.

Now celebrating over 20 years at the forefront of digital television, UKTV - an independent commercial joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. (SNI) - is proud to be the only British television broadcaster in The Sunday Times top 100 companies list.

corporate.uktv.co.uk / press.uktv.co.uk / @uktv_press

About Dave

Sky 111/246, Virgin 128/194, Freeview 12, BT & TalkTalk 12

On demand on Sky, Virgin and UKTV Play

Dave's had a haircut and shave in recent years as it grows from awkward teenager to fully-fledged commissioner of new and original shows. And it's not just comedy these days but entertainment and even some knock-out live sport. Hit UKTV Original commissions include Taskmaster, Dave Gorman Modern Life is Goodish, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled and Crackanory, all laden with the biggest names in British comedy. Dave enjoyed critical success with two series of Hoff the Record, a mockumentary ensemble comedy led by the living legend David Hasselhoff.

As well as home-grown delights Dave also goes stateside, cherry-picking cult US Shows including the sharp-witted and sharp-suited Suits and much-loved Parks and Recreation along with Emmy-nominated The Last Man on Earth. This all contributed to Dave's award win at the 2016 Broadcast Digital Awards for Best Entertainment Channel.

Dave is the UK's most watched non-PSB channel broadcasting to over 27 million people per month, and viewers continue to enjoy the ludicrously addictive American Pickers and UK remake of Storage Hunters. The channel continues to grow its original commissioning slate with political show Unspun With Matt Forde, Red Dwarf XI, Dara O Briain's Go 8 Bit, fantasy comedy Zapped and Celebrity Storage Hunters airing later this year.