Old Lions
Encyclopedia
Old Lions is a British
television and cinema
advertisement launched by the Carlsberg Group in 2006 to promote Carlsberg-brand pale lager
. The 180-second piece formed the cornerstone of the company's media campaign in England during the run-up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup
. The campaign targeted men between the ages of 16 and 34. The commercial shows the lead up to and playing of a game of football
between a local pub team and a team made up of former England
players, coached by Bobby Robson
. Old Lions was handled by advertising agency
Saatchi & Saatchi
. It was directed by Chris Palmer. Production was handled by production company
Gorgeous Enterprises
, with post-production by The Mill
. It premiered on British television on April 15, 2006.
Old Lions is the seventh television/cinema piece in the "World According to Carlsberg" series. The advertisement, and its associated campaign, was a huge critical and popular success. It received dozens of awards from professional organisations within the television and marketing industries, and in 2010 was voted one of the top ten advertisements of the decade by the British public. The interactive element of the television commercial proved a huge success, with more viewers spending a significant portion of time watching content than any previous interactive television
campaign.
yawning and getting out of bed, Alan Ball smelling his socks for freshness, Terry Butcher
buying bacon sandwiches. The team arrive at the grounds and go listen to a pre-game talk by Bobby Robson
, interrupted by Stuart Pearce
receiving a call from his mother. They file out to face a local pub team (played by employees of the production companies.) Peter Beardsley
scores the first goal, followed by several others. Bobby Charlton
receives a yellow card for shirt-pulling. Shilton saves a shot from a free kick
and more goals are scored, with the Lions winning the game 8-0. The team celebrate at a pub called the "Old Lion", as a narrator provides the strapline - "Carlsberg don't do pub teams. But if they did, they'd probably be the best pub team in the world."
in 1995, following several years as a sponsor of individual clubs. In exchange for providing finance, Carlsberg were entitled to run a number of promotions and competitions tying in with the players. As part of the company's £25m annual advertising spend Carlsberg sought to put their stamp on the 2006 FIFA World Cup
, the biggest football event of the year. However, the campaign had to be produced without using any FIFA trademarks or even mentioning the words "World Cup", as Carlsberg were not an official sponsor of the event.
Saatchi & Saatchi
, the advertising agency
responsible for marketing Carlsberg in the UK, solicited ideas from their teams of creative director
s and copywriters
, eventually settling on a pitch written by Dave Henderson and Richard Denny, who had previously worked together on the successful Idle Thumbs campaign for Virgin Mobile
. The campaign, titled Old Lions, was to primarily target men between the ages of 16 and 34 with a continuation of the successful "World According to Carlsberg" campaign with a piece around a dream team of former England national football players playing a match against a local pub team.
Henderson and Denny put the team together, and were largely given free rein for their choices. However, given that the piece was to promote a brand of lager, it was felt that the use of players with a history of alcoholism
, such as Tony Adams
or Paul Gascoigne
would be in poor taste. Once the list was assembled, the team began the long and arduous process of recruiting the players and finding a date before the World Cup on which none had prior commitments. According to Henderson: "[The team would] get 10 of them, but not the 11th, and then we'd get 11, and then one of them wouldn't be sure. We were talking people into doing it for about two or three months." The final selection for the team was: Peter Shilton
(1
), Des Walker
(2), Terry Butcher
(3), Jack Charlton
(4), Stuart Pearce
(5), Peter Reid
(6), Brian Robson (7), Alan Ball (8), Bobby Charlton
(9), Peter Beardsley
(10), and Chris Waddle
(11), with Bobby Robson
as coach. In all, the assembled team have 796 international cap
s between them.
Gorgeous Enterprises
, who assigned Chris Palmer as director of the project. Palmer's previous work included the highly successful Kicking It campaign for Adidas
and a live-action version of the opening sequence to The Simpsons
. Filming took place over two days in November 2005 in Dagenham
, a suburb
of London
. Footage of the football game itself was collected on one day (with filming beginning at 6:00am) as several players had prior commitments. Very little of the banter or in-game action was scripted, as it was felt that the footballers would lack the required acting skills. Among the few scripted moments were the booking of Bobby Charlton for shirt-pulling, the scene with Alan Ball's smelly socks, and Pearce receiving a phone-call in the changing room.
In all, six hours of football and nine hours of unscripted banter were filmed. The unused footage was edited into a making-of documentary and an outtake
featurette, both of which aired online and through interactive television
. Additional scripted 20-second segments were filmed to complement the full commercial, which would run throughout the World Cup. These included Bobby Robson going over tactics, and the team singing in the pub.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
television and cinema
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...
advertisement launched by the Carlsberg Group in 2006 to promote Carlsberg-brand pale lager
Pale lager
Pale lager is a very pale to golden-coloured beer with a well attenuated body and a varying degree of noble hop bitterness. The brewing process for this beer developed in the mid 19th century when Gabriel Sedlmayr took pale ale brewing techniques back to the Spaten Brewery in Germany and applied it...
. The 180-second piece formed the cornerstone of the company's media campaign in England during the run-up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup
2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
. The campaign targeted men between the ages of 16 and 34. The commercial shows the lead up to and playing of a game of football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
between a local pub team and a team made up of former England
England national football team
The England national football team represents England in association football and is controlled by the Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England is the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside Scotland, whom they played in the world's first...
players, coached by Bobby Robson
Bobby Robson
Sir Robert William "Bobby" Robson, CBE was an English footballer and manager, who coached seven European clubs and the England national team during his career....
. Old Lions was handled by advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...
Saatchi & Saatchi
Saatchi & Saatchi
Saatchi & Saatchi is a global advertising agency network with 140 offices in 80 countries and over 6,500 staff. It was founded in London in 1970 but now headquartered in New York. The parent company of the agency group was known as Saatchi & Saatchi PLC from 1976 to 1994, was listed on the London...
. It was directed by Chris Palmer. Production was handled by production company
Production company
A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...
Gorgeous Enterprises
Gorgeous Enterprises
Gorgeous Enterprises is a London-based film production company co-founded by Chris Palmer, Frank Budgen, and Paul Rothwell. The company works largely in the production of television advertisements, feature films, and music videos. It was formed by Chris Palmer in 1996, but legally became a new...
, with post-production by The Mill
The Mill (post-production)
The Mill is a post-production and visual effects company launched in 1990 with offices in London, New York and Los Angeles.The Mill's Film special effects subsidiary, Mill Film, won an Oscar for its work on the film Gladiator. The Mill was the first UK-based post-production company to set up...
. It premiered on British television on April 15, 2006.
Old Lions is the seventh television/cinema piece in the "World According to Carlsberg" series. The advertisement, and its associated campaign, was a huge critical and popular success. It received dozens of awards from professional organisations within the television and marketing industries, and in 2010 was voted one of the top ten advertisements of the decade by the British public. The interactive element of the television commercial proved a huge success, with more viewers spending a significant portion of time watching content than any previous interactive television
Interactive television
Interactive television describes a number of techniques that allow viewers to interact with television content as they view it.- Definitions :...
campaign.
Sequence
Old Lions opens to the team waking up and going through their pre-game morning routines; Peter ShiltonPeter Shilton
Peter Leslie Shilton OBE is a former English footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He currently holds the record for playing more games for England than anyone else, earning 125 caps....
yawning and getting out of bed, Alan Ball smelling his socks for freshness, Terry Butcher
Terry Butcher
Terence Ian "Terry" Butcher is an English football manager and former player. He was a highly successful football player and made his name as an uncompromising defender with Ipswich Town and Rangers in the 1980s. He was also a captain of England and won 77 caps in a ten-year international career...
buying bacon sandwiches. The team arrive at the grounds and go listen to a pre-game talk by Bobby Robson
Bobby Robson
Sir Robert William "Bobby" Robson, CBE was an English footballer and manager, who coached seven European clubs and the England national team during his career....
, interrupted by Stuart Pearce
Stuart Pearce
Stuart Pearce OBE is an English football manager and former player. He is currently the manager of the England national under-21 team and the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic football team...
receiving a call from his mother. They file out to face a local pub team (played by employees of the production companies.) Peter Beardsley
Peter Beardsley
Peter Andrew Beardsley MBE is an English former footballer who played between 1979 and 1999. He once set a record transfer fee in the game and represented his country 59 times between 1986 and 1996, once as captain...
scores the first goal, followed by several others. Bobby Charlton
Bobby Charlton
Sir Robert "Bobby" Charlton CBE is an English former professional football player, a member of the England team who won the World Cup and Ballon d'Or for European Footballer of the Year in 1966...
receives a yellow card for shirt-pulling. Shilton saves a shot from a free kick
Direct free kick
A direct free kick is a method of restarting play in a game of association football following a foul. Unlike an indirect free kick, a goal may be scored directly against the opposing side without the ball having first touched another player.-Award:...
and more goals are scored, with the Lions winning the game 8-0. The team celebrate at a pub called the "Old Lion", as a narrator provides the strapline - "Carlsberg don't do pub teams. But if they did, they'd probably be the best pub team in the world."
Pre-production
Carlsberg became an official sponsor of The Football AssociationThe Football Association
The Football Association, also known as simply The FA, is the governing body of football in England, and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. It was formed in 1863, and is the oldest national football association...
in 1995, following several years as a sponsor of individual clubs. In exchange for providing finance, Carlsberg were entitled to run a number of promotions and competitions tying in with the players. As part of the company's £25m annual advertising spend Carlsberg sought to put their stamp on the 2006 FIFA World Cup
2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
, the biggest football event of the year. However, the campaign had to be produced without using any FIFA trademarks or even mentioning the words "World Cup", as Carlsberg were not an official sponsor of the event.
Saatchi & Saatchi
Saatchi & Saatchi
Saatchi & Saatchi is a global advertising agency network with 140 offices in 80 countries and over 6,500 staff. It was founded in London in 1970 but now headquartered in New York. The parent company of the agency group was known as Saatchi & Saatchi PLC from 1976 to 1994, was listed on the London...
, the advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...
responsible for marketing Carlsberg in the UK, solicited ideas from their teams of creative director
Creative Director
A creative director is a position often found within the graphic design, film, music, fashion, advertising, media or entertainment industries, but may be useful in other creative organizations such as web development and software development firms as well....
s and copywriters
Copywriting
Copywriting is the use of words and ideas to promote a person, business, opinion or idea. Although the word copy may be applied to any content intended for printing , the term copywriter is generally limited to promotional situations, regardless of the medium...
, eventually settling on a pitch written by Dave Henderson and Richard Denny, who had previously worked together on the successful Idle Thumbs campaign for Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile is a brand used by many mobile phone service providers across the globe; its headquarters are based in the United Kingdom. Virgin Mobile has local operations in Australia, Canada, France, India, South Africa, Greece, United Kingdom and the United States. It briefly also had operations...
. The campaign, titled Old Lions, was to primarily target men between the ages of 16 and 34 with a continuation of the successful "World According to Carlsberg" campaign with a piece around a dream team of former England national football players playing a match against a local pub team.
Henderson and Denny put the team together, and were largely given free rein for their choices. However, given that the piece was to promote a brand of lager, it was felt that the use of players with a history of alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, such as Tony Adams
Tony Adams (footballer)
Tony Alexander Adams, MBE is an English football manager and former player.Adams spent his entire playing career of 22 years as a defender at Arsenal. He is considered one of the greatest Arsenal players of all time by the club's own fans and was included in the Football League 100 Legends...
or Paul Gascoigne
Paul Gascoigne
Paul John Gascoigne , commonly referred to as Gazza, is a retired English professional footballer.Playing in the position of midfield, Gascoigne's career included spells at Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Rangers, Middlesbrough, Everton and Gansu Tianma, where he scored at least a goal...
would be in poor taste. Once the list was assembled, the team began the long and arduous process of recruiting the players and finding a date before the World Cup on which none had prior commitments. According to Henderson: "[The team would] get 10 of them, but not the 11th, and then we'd get 11, and then one of them wouldn't be sure. We were talking people into doing it for about two or three months." The final selection for the team was: Peter Shilton
Peter Shilton
Peter Leslie Shilton OBE is a former English footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He currently holds the record for playing more games for England than anyone else, earning 125 caps....
(1
Squad number
In team sports, the squad number, shirt number, jersey number, sweater number, uniform number or simply a number is the number worn on a player's uniform, to identify and distinguish each player from others wearing the same or similar uniforms...
), Des Walker
Des Walker
Desmond Sinclair "Des" Walker is a former England international footballer who is best remembered for his spells with Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday...
(2), Terry Butcher
Terry Butcher
Terence Ian "Terry" Butcher is an English football manager and former player. He was a highly successful football player and made his name as an uncompromising defender with Ipswich Town and Rangers in the 1980s. He was also a captain of England and won 77 caps in a ten-year international career...
(3), Jack Charlton
Jack Charlton
John "Jack" Charlton, OBE, DL is a former footballer and manager who played for Leeds United in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and was part of the England team who won the 1966 World Cup...
(4), Stuart Pearce
Stuart Pearce
Stuart Pearce OBE is an English football manager and former player. He is currently the manager of the England national under-21 team and the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic football team...
(5), Peter Reid
Peter Reid
Peter Reid is an English football manager, pundit and retired player, who is currently without a club since his departure from Plymouth Argyle.A defensive midfielder in his playing days, Reid enjoyed a long and successful career...
(6), Brian Robson (7), Alan Ball (8), Bobby Charlton
Bobby Charlton
Sir Robert "Bobby" Charlton CBE is an English former professional football player, a member of the England team who won the World Cup and Ballon d'Or for European Footballer of the Year in 1966...
(9), Peter Beardsley
Peter Beardsley
Peter Andrew Beardsley MBE is an English former footballer who played between 1979 and 1999. He once set a record transfer fee in the game and represented his country 59 times between 1986 and 1996, once as captain...
(10), and Chris Waddle
Chris Waddle
Christopher Roland "Chris" Waddle is a former footballer from England. He played for a number of clubs in the 1980s and 90s, including Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield Wednesday in England, and Olympique de Marseille in France...
(11), with Bobby Robson
Bobby Robson
Sir Robert William "Bobby" Robson, CBE was an English footballer and manager, who coached seven European clubs and the England national team during his career....
as coach. In all, the assembled team have 796 international cap
Cap (sport)
In sports, a cap is a metaphorical term for a player's appearance on a select team, such as a national team. The term dates from the practice in the United Kingdom of awarding a cap to every player in an international match of association football...
s between them.
Production
For the production of the commercial itself, Saatchi & Saatchi hired production companyProduction company
A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...
Gorgeous Enterprises
Gorgeous Enterprises
Gorgeous Enterprises is a London-based film production company co-founded by Chris Palmer, Frank Budgen, and Paul Rothwell. The company works largely in the production of television advertisements, feature films, and music videos. It was formed by Chris Palmer in 1996, but legally became a new...
, who assigned Chris Palmer as director of the project. Palmer's previous work included the highly successful Kicking It campaign for Adidas
Adidas
Adidas AG is a German sports apparel manufacturer and parent company of the Adidas Group, which consists of the Reebok sportswear company, TaylorMade-Adidas golf company , and Rockport...
and a live-action version of the opening sequence to The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
. Filming took place over two days in November 2005 in Dagenham
Dagenham
Dagenham is a large suburb in East London, forming the eastern part of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and located east of Charing Cross. It was historically an agrarian village in the county of Essex and remained mostly undeveloped until 1921 when the London County Council began...
, a suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Footage of the football game itself was collected on one day (with filming beginning at 6:00am) as several players had prior commitments. Very little of the banter or in-game action was scripted, as it was felt that the footballers would lack the required acting skills. Among the few scripted moments were the booking of Bobby Charlton for shirt-pulling, the scene with Alan Ball's smelly socks, and Pearce receiving a phone-call in the changing room.
In all, six hours of football and nine hours of unscripted banter were filmed. The unused footage was edited into a making-of documentary and an outtake
Outtake
An outtake is a portion of a work that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and DVD reissues of many albums and films as bonus tracks or features, in film often, but not...
featurette, both of which aired online and through interactive television
Interactive television
Interactive television describes a number of techniques that allow viewers to interact with television content as they view it.- Definitions :...
. Additional scripted 20-second segments were filmed to complement the full commercial, which would run throughout the World Cup. These included Bobby Robson going over tactics, and the team singing in the pub.
Release and reception
| List of awards |
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