ITV’s award-winning “Britain get talking” mental health awareness campaign returned with an unexpected star interview interrupting Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway last weekend.
During the broadcast on Saturday (3 April), presenters Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly interviewed Sir Mo Farah, the Olympic champion athlete – entirely through texting in order to demonstrate how text chats are inferior to having a vocal conversation.
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The stunt will be followed up by 30-second spots on ITV called “The Britain Get Talking How to Chat show” hosted by Roman Kemp, which will also promote longer content on ITV Hub, the video-on-demand service.
The campaign’s central theme is how better conversations can help and features the tagline “The better you talk, the better you feel”.
Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway was the most-watched programme for ITV that night and drew 5.2 million viewers with a peak of 5.8 million, according to overnight estimates.
“Britain Get Talking”, created by ITV’s ad agency Uncommon Creative Studio, launched in October 2019 by pausing the final of Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions for a minute to give people time back to talk to their friends and family. The campaign is part of the broadcaster’s objective to encourage 10 million people to improve their mental and physical health by 2023.
ITV and its media agency Goodstuff won the Grand Prix at last year’s Media Week Awards for the “Britain Get Talking” campaign, which has featured a silent ad break in which consumer brands created their own custom inaudible advertising.