PG Tips

Monkey's Monumental Mission

Red Nose Day is a national TV charity event where celebrities take on enormous, daunting challenges to raise money. Brands partner and play their part by selling special fundraising packs. We aimed higher.

We brought our beloved brand mascot – PG tips’ Monkey – to life in the real world. Building a robot Monkey who took on his own towering feat: climbing Europe’s tallest building. Fans could support Monkey’s heroics by buying special packs.

Animatronics

We built a climbing Monkey!

Monkey is a celebrity in his own right. He lives in the real world and is never animated in any of his TV appearances, so for us, if he was going to climb the Shard, he was going to do it for real. The excellent animatronics guys at Millenium FX built a fully working climbing robot that really did climb to the top of the Shard!

How it began

It started with a teaser...

Months before we were allowed to reveal what Monkey was up to, we took the opportunity to create a little teaser video whilst filming an earlier project. Not giving too much away, we announced that Monkey would be doing his bit for Comic Relief, in his usual cheeky Monkey style, "Comic Relief? No fee then…"

Team Monkey

With the help of some celeb chums...

As the time to scale the Shard drew nearer, fans witnessed Monkey's progress in training as he was helped by his celeb chums. 'Team Monkey' helped prepare Monkey in person for the stunt, and other celebs added their support with good luck messages.