• Product/Brand - Harvey Nichols
• Spot - Rewards
• Music Title - Wot Do U Call It
• Artist - Wiley
• Composer - Cowie
• Publisher - Sony/ATV
• Record Co - XL Recordings
• Ad Agency - adam&eveDDB
• Creatives - Ben Priest, Richard Brim, Ben Tollett, Ben Stiltz, Colin Booth
• Film Company - Blinkink
• Film Director - The Layzell Brothers
• Post Production - Blink
• Air Date - 13/7/15

Upmarket department store chain Harvey Nichols isn’t expecting a referral to the Advertising Standards Authority over its Rewards spot, which launched on July 13 in support of a new app-driven loyalty scheme.

But its defence is ready should there be complaints that the 90 second clip featuring CCTV footage of shoplifters taken in its flagship Knightsbridge store breaches the boundaries of good taste.

“For legal reasons we only used film where we were sure an offence was carried out but didn’t involve cases which might still be under investigation or be the subject of criminal proceedings,” says Rebecca Taylor, Harvey Nichols marketing manager.

Thus top TV animators the Layzell brothers, best known for their outlandishly tongue-in-cheek E4 trailers, were drafted in not only to add a sense of fun to the on-screen action but also to protect the guilty parties' true identities!

The result is wickedly amusing mini-drama where both humour and narrative are cleverly driven by Wot Do U Call It, a piece of pacy, protean grime lifted from the 2004 XL album Treddin’ On Thin Ice by the hugely influential London rapper Wiley.

“It wasn’t until we’d seen the final edit that we started thinking about music which might work well with the cartoon images and the jerky, lo-fi footage,” Taylor continues.

“We looked at all sorts of genres ourselves, including an old Laurel & Hardy slapstick track from the 1930s, until the Layzells suggested Wiley. We all loved it immediately so there was no need to do a wider search or brief rights holders.”