Anchor free range cow makes Great Escape

Set to The Great Escape theme tune, the advert reprises the scene where the hero makes his final break for freedom. The Anchor cow takes off across the fields on a motorbike chased by farmers shaking their pitchforks. He finally leaps a fence and rides off to freedom, and the ad closes with a pack shot and the line ‘Anchor – The Free Range Butter Company’.

The TV ad will run for a month, with 40-second and 10-second versions, followed by Anchor brand ads in women’s press featuring Anchor cows in popular holiday destinations such as Paris and the pyramids, with the line ‘Our cows are free to roam’.

There will also be new press advertising for Anchor Lighter in women’s, slimming and parenting press during January and February. And, for the first time, Anchor will use regional radio with cows mooing along to The Great Escape theme.

Investment in the January/February campaign is £2.5m as part of a planned brand spend of £10m during 2009.

Anchor brand manager Emily Oldridge said: “Our free range positioning has been extremely successful and the felt cutout style is now distinctly owned by Anchor, with consumers instantly recognising and liking it. The new TV ad builds on last year’s campaign and plays on a much loved movie and theme tune to create an iconic and memorable execution for Anchor.

“It was incredibly complicated, though great fun to make, with a crew of eight spending 200 hours cutting their way through 50 metres of felt – the length of an Olympic swimming pool – and [using] 400 scalpels to create the 50 cows and 50 motorbikes we needed to create the ad.”