ARCHIVEDr. Scholl's Her Feet Reframes Foot Care as a Lifelong Story
How Dr. Scholl's Her Feet Launched a New Brand Platform in Canada Dr. Scholl's Her Feet is a...
Berocca Donkey Ad Captures the UK Energy Market in 2011
Berocca's "Donkey" is a UK television commercial created by JWT London and produced by COY!, first broadcast on 18 September 2011 to introduce Berocca Boost — an effervescent variant formulated with guarana — to an 18–30-year-old audience seeking a pronounced lift in energy and alertness.
The campaign marks a deliberate shift in how Bayer's Berocca brand spoke to younger British consumers. Where earlier Berocca advertising in the United Kingdom had leaned into a broadly optimistic "feel sharper, feel better" tone, "Donkey" pursues something more direct: an explicit, performance-oriented claim built around Berocca Boost's guarana-based formulation, guarana being a natural source of caffeine. The creative vehicle is a single film asset, made for UK television, archived publicly in October 2011, according to Clapboard's editorial record. JWT London handled strategy and creative, while production company COY! executed the film itself.
In the United Kingdom of 2011, the vitamins and supplements category was growing but fiercely competitive. The "Donkey" campaign enters that environment not as a gentle wellness nudge but as an energy statement — positioning Berocca Boost closer to the functional energy sector than to the multivitamin shelf. That distinction shapes every creative and strategic decision visible in the work. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100 reflects competent execution within a crowded category, with room for deeper creative ambition.
Berocca Boost's guarana proposition targets a gap between everyday multivitamins and caffeinated energy drinks in the United Kingdom. JWT London's strategic logic is clear: 18–30-year-olds are the heaviest consumers of energy products, and Berocca Boost's effervescent, vitamin-rich format offers a credible alternative to sugary energy drinks without abandoning the pharmaceutical authority that Bayer's heritage provides.
The competitive landscape in the UK vitamins and supplements market in 2011 was substantive. Seven Seas held approximately 17% of the UK vitamins-and-supplements market that year, according to data cited by Campaign Live, while Vitabiotics held approximately 11% of the same market, also per Campaign Live, and had gained the most share in the two years preceding the campaign. Berocca was therefore challenging established players with deep retail roots and broad consumer recognition. The decision to promote a specific sub-brand — Berocca Boost rather than the core Berocca range — allowed JWT London to carve a more targeted positioning without disrupting the parent brand's existing equity.
The global vitamins and food supplements market was valued at approximately €20.62 billion in 2011 and grew to roughly €25.5 billion by 2015, according to Nutra Ingredients, implying a compound annual growth rate of around 5.5% across that period. The market was led by vitamins B and C and by multivitamins, per Nutra Ingredients — a category structure that sits directly beneath Berocca's core formula. In the United Kingdom specifically, Berocca UK sales rose in the period surrounding this campaign, per PR Newswire, underlining that the brand was already in momentum before "Donkey" aired.
COY! produced the "Donkey" film for Berocca Boost in 2011. Production credits for the "Donkey" campaign beyond COY!'s confirmed role as production company are not publicly documented in any journalist-authored source reviewed for this analysis.
The creative lineage of Berocca's UK advertising is instructive context for reading "Donkey." The brand's 2008 principal UK campaign featured people dancing on treadmills — a visual register that, as noted by Clapboard's editorial archive, echoed OK Go's 2006 music video "Here It Goes Again" and used Blancmange's 1982 track "Living on the Ceiling" as its soundtrack. That campaign traded in energetic optimism expressed through physical movement and a retro musical sensibility. "Donkey" represents the next phase: according to Clapboard's lineage research, the 2011 commercial marked a transition from the earlier "feel sharper, feel better" advertising toward a more explicitly performance-oriented proposition, one calibrated to the guarana-powered Boost variant rather than the broader Berocca range.
The use of a single film asset, deployed on UK television, reflects a media strategy that prioritises broadcast reach over fragmented digital touchpoints — appropriate for a mass-market pharmaceutical brand seeking to communicate a new product benefit to a wide 18–30-year-old audience in the United Kingdom. The choice of the word "Donkey" as the campaign title suggests a comedic or anthropomorphic creative device, consistent with JWT London's reputation for accessible, character-driven storytelling in UK healthcare advertising. The film format itself gives the brand space to dramatise the energy proposition in a way that static or digital-only formats cannot replicate.
No verified performance data for the "Donkey" campaign is publicly available. No campaign-specific sales lift, brand-tracking results, or market-share change attributable to the "Donkey" film has been documented in Campaign Live, Adweek, Ad Age, The Drum, or any other journalist-authored trade source reviewed for this analysis.
Structural analysis of the campaign offers an alternative measure of effectiveness. JWT London's decision to anchor the creative to Berocca Boost's guarana formulation — rather than to generic wellness claims — gave the work a defensible product truth that many competitors in the UK vitamins market lacked. Seven Seas and Vitabiotics, the two leading players in the UK supplements market according to Campaign Live, both operated with broad product portfolios and correspondingly broad advertising messages. Berocca Boost's specificity is a competitive advantage the "Donkey" campaign could exploit directly.
The campaign's Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100 positions the work as functionally solid but not exceptional by the standards of pharmaceutical advertising in the United Kingdom. The score reflects an execution that communicates the product benefit clearly and reaches the right audience through the right medium — UK television — without breaking significant creative ground. For a brand in growth phase within a competitive category, reliable communication of a differentiated product truth is a legitimate objective, and on that measure "Donkey" appears to have been fit for purpose.
The Berocca "Donkey" campaign is a UK television advertisement created by JWT London and produced by COY!, first broadcast on 18 September 2011. It promoted Berocca Boost, an effervescent supplement containing guarana, to an 18–30-year-old British audience with a performance-oriented energy message. The campaign comprised a single film asset, archived publicly in October 2011, according to Clapboard.
JWT London created the Berocca Donkey advertisement. The agency handled both strategy and creative for the campaign, while COY! served as the production company responsible for the film. The campaign was published in the United Kingdom in 2011 and targeted adults aged 18 to 30 with Berocca Boost's guarana-based energy proposition, according to Clapboard's archive record.
The Donkey ad promotes Berocca Boost, a specific variant of Berocca that contains guarana, a natural source of caffeine. Berocca Boost is positioned as a stronger energy and alertness product within the broader Berocca pharmaceutical range, differentiated from the standard Berocca formula by its explicit performance-oriented proposition, as documented in Clapboard's editorial research.
The Donkey campaign marked a shift in Berocca's UK advertising direction. Earlier Berocca UK work, notably the 2008 treadmill-dancing campaign using Blancmange's "Living on the Ceiling," favoured a broadly optimistic tone. According to Clapboard, the 2011 Donkey commercial moved toward a more explicitly performance-driven message aligned with Berocca Boost's guarana formulation.
The Berocca Donkey campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100, according to Clapboard's editorial rating system. This score reflects competent, on-brief execution within a competitive UK pharmaceutical advertising category, acknowledging clear product communication and appropriate media placement while noting the campaign does not reach exceptional creative distinction.
Seven Seas and Vitabiotics were the leading competitors in the UK vitamins and supplements market in 2011. Seven Seas held approximately 17% of the UK market and Vitabiotics approximately 11%, according to Campaign Live. Vitabiotics had gained the most market share in the two years prior to the Berocca Donkey campaign's launch in September 2011.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
