In partnership with MediaCom and the Guardian, Dulux ran a campaign to create fame and stature for the brand’s ‘Let’s Colour Awards’, while ensuring consumers recognised the association between colour and Dulux.

1.
Dulux
Let’s Colour Award
Best use of content
Executive summary:
Dulux has been colouring Britain for years. In a low-interest category an association
with colour makes Dulux stand out from competitors; for the second year of the ‘Let’s
Colour Awards’ we needed to bring these previously internal awards to a wider
audience. Using photography to inspire, we partnered with the Guardian to get
readers involved in colour to bring to life great colour and imagery. Awareness of the
Awards rose significantly and we increased the association between Dulux and
colour.
Background and objectives
Dulux has been brightening the lives of people throughout the country for years. They now
have an objective of ‘colouring one million people’s lives by 2020’; using Dulux’s colour
authority to try and brighten up grey spaces and local lives throughout the UK through the
Let’s Colour Project.
As part of this aim, Dulux wanted to recognise the talent which makes the world a brighter
place and the ‘Dulux Let’s Colour Award’ was born; this Dulux-owned initiative is now in its
second year. It is the ultimate celebration of colour in every aspect of our lives, from the
homes we live in to the clothes we wear.
However, the Awards had been internally facing with zero awareness outside the Dulux
community. We needed to take this out to a wider consumer audience.
Our objectives were to create fame and stature for the Let’s Colour Awards to ensure
consumers recognise the association between colour and Dulux. The vision being that the
association with colour makes Dulux stand out in a low-interest category. The specific role
for a newsbrand was to prompt readers to make this association, via a compelling and highly
visual platform.
Insight
We needed to encourage people to associate Dulux with ‘colour’ in all its various
manifestations – in fact white is Dulux’s biggest selling colour! People think of Dulux in a
literal sense i.e. the colour of your walls, and not in a wider context so we needed to broaden
horizons.

2.
We knew that we needed a visual medium to create this message, and when thinking about
how we see manifestations of colour, photography brought this to life.
The Guardian has a strong heritage in photography due to a wealth of readers, be it
professional, semi-professional or amateur, sending in portfolio shots. Therefore they
launched a Camera Club. They also have a dedicated photo app, Eyewitness. We wanted to
tap into this, bringing Dulux and colour to life, and they were therefore the obvious partner.
What’s more, we knew that this could deliver the scale we needed for awareness; just one
insertion in Guardian Weekend reaches over one million adults.
Plan
The campaign consisted of two parts to land both awareness and engagement:
Camera club assignment
Roger Tooth, the head of photography at the Guardian, launched the campaign with a
camera club assignment both online and in Guardian Weekend. Readers were invited to
create and send in a portfolio of photos documenting the way that colour impacts them
emotionally with an opportunity to have the photos published in Guardian Weekend.
This was followed up with online articles, Guardian Weekend reminders and a results special
both in print and online.
In order to create a fully joined-up campaign, really drawing the readers in to these internal
awards, Dulux created a Guardian photography award for the winner, invites to the award
ceremony and accommodation paid for.
My life in colour advertorials: A series of seven Guardian Weekend features.
The Dulux Let’s Colour Awards span across various vertical sectors such as: Best use of
colour in homes and interiors; Best use of colour in fashion and beauty; Colour innovation in
technology and design. We used talent within these sectors to talk about their experiences of
colour and how it has changed their lives and took them out to a broader audience by
running these as features.
For example:
Chloe Macintosh – co-founder of made.com
Zandra Rhodes – British designer
Susie Lau – founder of Style Bubble
Marianne Shillingford, creative director at Dulux, created the link back to the brand with her
thoughts on colour. All features promoted the relevant award and landed the association
between Dulux and colour.
Content was housed on a dedicated microsite and we used all Guardian real estate to drive
readers/users through to the Dulux website to vote.

3.
Results
We successfully brought what is a low engagement category and product to life in a highly
visual and engaging way. We ran pre and post campaign research, with some fantastic
results.
Drive awareness of colour and Dulux:
• Two million unique users to the microsite
• Awareness of Dulux Let’s Colour Awards rose from 1% to 22% (all Guardian
readers)
• Unprompted, Dulux was correctly attributed as the owner of the Let’s Colour
Awards (86%)
• Recall of the campaign was slightly above Guardian benchmark recall of 30
campaigns (36% v 33%)
Drive the association between colour and Dulux:
• Dulux is a brand that understands the power of colour +23%
Engage our audience around Dulux and Colour:
• Submissions for Camera Club were benchmarked between 3,000 and 5,000.
5,000 submissions were received
The campaign showed us that newsbrands are highly effective at delivering a visually
compelling campaign both through print and digital platforms. The Guardian further
enhanced its reputation as a newsbrand that can deliver great imagery and a creative
audience.
Client View
“The Let’s Colour Awards are a celebration of the impact and power of colour, in all of its
guises –it’s what we believe in as a brand; that colour makes the world and people’s lives
brighter. So it was incredibly important to us to share that with a wider audience. We loved
MediaCom’s idea and knew that the Guardian would be a great fit and the advertorials were
a vibrant and beautiful means of bringing the awards and competition to life.
“The partnership with Guardian’s Camera Club was the prefect way for us to celebrate
people’s imaginative contributions to the theme – we were absolutely delighted by the
volume and quality of entries, it totally exceeded our expectations.
“Overall, it was fantastic to be able to host the Guardian Camera Club winner at the actual
awards and we are delighted that the whole partnership drove such a strong association
between Dulux and the power of colour – because that’s what we’re all about.”
Johnny Corbett – senior marketing manager, Dulux