ARCHIVEBooths Supermarket Conjures Christmas Magic With The Snow Globe
How Booths Supermarket Made a Snow Globe the Symbol of Christmas Magic in 2021 Booths Supermarket's...
Screwfix Champions Real Tradespeople in Its Boldest Brand Refresh
Screwfix launched 'The Choice of Champions' in March 2022 — a full brand identity overhaul created by Chime360 that repositions the UK's largest multi-channel retailer of trade tools and hardware as the definitive ally of skilled tradespeople, running across television, out-of-home, digital, and in-store retail assets nationwide.
The campaign represents the first work Chime360 produced for Screwfix following its appointment to the account in 2021. Rather than a conventional product-led retail push, 'The Choice of Champions' functions as an end-to-end refresh of the Screwfix brand identity, extending across the company's website, catalogues, company collateral, and all in-store assets across the United Kingdom. The ambition, as described in the campaign brief, was to position Screwfix as the champion of makers and doers — a brand that exists in service of the professionals who rely on it every working day.
The hero asset is a 40-second film directed by production company 32, set to Mozart's Requiem, as reported by LBBOnline. Shorter edits — a 30-second version and two 20-second cutdowns — were also produced for television and video-on-demand placements running through the end of April 2022, per The Drum. Media channels spanned television, VOD, out-of-home, display, social media, YouTube, and Twitch, according to Creative Salon. Television placements included high-profile broadcast environments: Six Nations rugby coverage, FA Cup matches, and Channel 4's Gogglebox, as reported by Press Screwfix. Digital billboards were deployed in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool, anchoring the campaign's presence across the United Kingdom's major urban centres. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100.
Screwfix operated 840 stores across Great Britain in 2022, the largest store network among leading trade and DIY retailers in the United Kingdom, according to Statista. Its nearest comparable specialist, Toolstation, operated 563 Great Britain stores in the same period, per Statista, underscoring the scale advantage Screwfix holds in physical retail. Despite that dominance, the brand recognised that scale alone does not build emotional affinity with professional tradespeople — a highly discerning audience that responds to authenticity rather than promotional messaging.
The strategic rationale behind 'The Choice of Champions' was shaped by a broader market reality. The UK DIY and home-improvement market contracted in 2022 following a pandemic-driven boom, as the cost-of-living crisis reduced discretionary spending on home improvement, according to insightdiy.co.uk. Mintel reports that UK spending on DIY products fell by approximately one point six percent in 2023, confirming that the post-pandemic tailwind had receded. Against that backdrop, Chime360 and Screwfix elected to invest in brand equity rather than price-driven messaging — a deliberate counter-cyclical positioning move.
The campaign's central strategic insight was the rejection of outdated, stereotypical codes long associated with the construction industry in the United Kingdom. Instead of portraying tradespeople through familiar shorthand, 'The Choice of Champions' reframes them as elite professionals whose talent, skill, strength, and dedication deserve the same cultural respect accorded to athletes or craftspeople in other fields. Jack Wallace, Director of Marketing at Screwfix, stated, as reported by Creative Salon: "Our customers are champions. We wanted to create a campaign that showed their skills and dedication by putting them front and centre." Screwfix's parent company, Kingfisher plc — which also owns B&Q and TradePoint in the United Kingdom, according to Retail Gazette — provides the group-level infrastructure that makes a brand-first investment of this nature commercially viable even in a softening market.
The 40-second hero film directed by production company 32 anchors the entire creative execution of 'The Choice of Champions.' The choice of Mozart's Requiem as the soundtrack is the campaign's most distinctive creative decision — an operatic, formally elevated piece of music placed in deliberate counterpoint to the physical, hands-on world of trade work, as noted by LBBOnline. That juxtaposition is the campaign's central creative argument: the work tradespeople do is as worthy of grandeur and reverence as any classical art form.
Veryan Prigg, Associate Creative Director at Chime360, stated, as reported by Marketing Beat: "Authenticity really is at the heart of this campaign." The production approach reflects that priority. Rather than stylised depictions of tradespeople as generic archetypes, the film foregrounds the precision and physicality of real skilled work — an approach consistent with the broader brand strategy of dismantling what Screwfix described as wrongly affiliated, outdated category codes. The narrative structure of the film builds toward the campaign line, treating the tradespeople on screen not as background texture but as the protagonists of a genuine story about craft and professional identity.
The identity refresh that accompanies the film extends the creative language across every consumer touchpoint in the United Kingdom — website, catalogue, in-store retail environments, and company collateral — ensuring the visual and tonal shift is not confined to broadcast media. The media agency Wavemaker handled channel planning and buying, as reported by The Drum, and the decision to place the campaign within high-attention broadcast contexts — Six Nations, FA Cup, Gogglebox — reflects a deliberate choice to reach tradespeople in moments of leisure rather than purely at the point of professional intent. The Twitch placement signals an additional strategic reach toward a younger, digitally native skilled-trades audience across the United Kingdom.
No independently verified post-campaign effectiveness data for 'The Choice of Champions' is publicly available from third-party measurement bodies at the time of publication. The YouTube upload of the 40-second film recorded approximately five thousand seven hundred and forty-two views and twenty-six likes, as documented in the campaign record, which reflects the modest organic reach typical of a brand film whose primary distribution weight sat within paid broadcast and out-of-home channels rather than owned digital platforms.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several markers of effectiveness. The decision to deploy across Six Nations and FA Cup environments in the United Kingdom placed the film in front of large, attentive audiences with a demonstrable overlap with the core trade professional demographic. The end-to-end brand identity refresh — extending beyond the film into website, catalogue, and in-store assets — means the campaign's impact, if any, would be reflected across multiple brand health metrics rather than a single channel performance indicator. Kingfisher plc reported a significant increase in online sales across its brands between 2021 and 2023, according to vccp.com, though that figure encompasses the full Kingfisher portfolio and cannot be attributed to this campaign alone.
The Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 for 'The Choice of Champions' reflects a campaign that executes its creative ambition with clarity and genuine craft, while leaving room for stronger measurable differentiation and broader cultural cut-through relative to the scale of the brand identity investment. The Mozart-scored film represents a meaningful departure from category convention in United Kingdom retail advertising, and the Chime360 and Screwfix partnership signals a long-term commitment to brand building over short-term promotional activity.
'The Choice of Champions' is a 2022 brand campaign by Screwfix, created by Chime360. It launched in March 2022 across the United Kingdom as a full brand identity overhaul celebrating skilled tradespeople through a 40-second film, television placements, out-of-home advertising, and digital channels including YouTube and Twitch.
The 40-second hero film was directed by production company 32. It was set to Mozart's Requiem and formed the centrepiece of the campaign. Shorter edits of 30 seconds and 20 seconds were also produced for television and video-on-demand placements running through April 2022 across the United Kingdom.
Chime360 created 'The Choice of Champions' for Screwfix. It was the agency's first work for the brand after winning the Screwfix account in 2021. Media planning and buying was handled by Wavemaker. The campaign launched publicly on 23 March 2022 in the United Kingdom.
Screwfix ran the campaign across television — including Six Nations, FA Cup, and Gogglebox — as well as VOD, YouTube, Twitch, social media, display, and out-of-home. Digital billboards were deployed in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool, with in-store assets updated across Screwfix's 840 Great Britain locations.
The campaign challenged outdated stereotypes associated with the construction industry in the United Kingdom. Screwfix repositioned itself as the champion of skilled tradespeople by celebrating their expertise and dedication. Director of Marketing Jack Wallace stated the goal was to show customers' skills and dedication by placing them front and centre of the brand.
'The Choice of Champions' received a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative craft and a clear strategic departure from category conventions in UK retail advertising, while indicating scope for greater measurable differentiation relative to the scale of the brand identity investment made by Screwfix and Chime360.
.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
