Bristol’s animation pioneers Aardman have turned Reggae Reggae Sauce founder Levi Roots into an animated character for his first TV ad, which launches on May 3.
The ad features Levi cooking a barbeque in the back garden of a house in Brixton, singing the “It’s so nice I had to name it twice” Reggae Reggae Sauce song as he splashes the sauce onto sausages and drumsticks.
The 53-year-old joins a select band of celebrities, including the Spice Girls, Peter Gabriel and Barry White, to be turned into animations by Aardman.
Musician turned entrepreneur Levi, who sang at last year's St Pauls Carnival, said of his Aardman character: “He’s definitely cooler, more handsome than me.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Wallace and Gromit so it’s a real treat to be made into one of their characters; if not a little surreal.”
Tim Beard, Reggae Reggae Sauce’s marketing controller, said: “It’s been five years since Levi was last on our TV screens on Dragons’ Den and we know from research that there are consumers who have neither seen Levi’s original pitch nor heard his Reggae Reggae Sauce song. Therefore we wanted to introduce Levi to them just as he was before he and his sauce became famous; an ordinary man on a mission to put some Caribbean flava into everyday British meals.
“We decided to put the Reggae Reggae Sauce song at the heart of the TV advertising creative to rekindle the memory of Levi singing and playing an acoustic guitar during his Dragons’ Den performance when he slayed the Dragons and won the nation over with his performance.”
The £2m campaign will launch on ITV, and will also roll out in the cinema, as well as PR, online amplification, in-store POS and sampling.
