Greene King go out for a takeaway
Greene King is making its pubs the stars of a major new sponsorship deal involving Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.
The £1 million sponsorship is a first for a UK pub company, putting pubs on the same high-profile platform as premium consumer brands.
The deal centres on Greene King's sponsorship of the latest series of Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, with 80 seconds airtime in prime time slots, as well as additional exposure on ITV2 and branding on the ITV website.
The last series of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway averaged 7.8 million viewers.
The creative for the TV slots will identify a number of Greene King pubs around the UK in a fun and new way.
Nine screens will appear in the lead-in to the ad-break, each of which with a different image inside.
The camera will zoom into one of them where a pub name will be represented by the image.
For example, an elephant walking on screen with a castle in the background will identify the "Elephant and Castle" pub and its location, with the tagline "Greene King, the sign of a great pub".
The company is making sure all its licensees share the benefits of the publicity by running a scratchcard promotion in Greene King pubs across the UK.
There are over £4 million worth of prizes to be won, including tickets to the show where each week one lucky person wins all the featured products in the ad-breaks during the programme.
Other prizes include a car, a flat screen TV, MP3 players, and of course Greene King's famous premium ales.
Greene King chief executive Rooney Anand said: "We're delighted to have secured such a great sponsorship opportunity with one of the most popular and appealing entertainment shows on television.
Millions of viewers watch the show each Saturday night so this is the ideal platform for us to create awareness and interest in Greene King across the UK.
"Our leading ale and pub brands such as Greene King IPA, Abbot Ale, Old Speckled Hen, Hungry Horse, Old English Inns and Belhaven pubs in Scotland are already well loved.
"We believe that this new initiative with ITV will further enhance the profile of Greene King and encourage our customers to associate the company with our brands."
Anand added: "Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway attracts viewers that are a great fit with our customer base right across our portfolio of leading ale brands and pub businesses and we're looking forward to rolling out a number of exciting initiatives to further leverage the sponsorship within our pubs."
