Business at Marsh Tackle & Country Sports in High Wycombe, Bucks, has enjoyed a bit of a lift recently, thanks to a highly original piece of award-winning ambient marketing by the HPS Group in Marlow.

The agency’s creative team came up with the idea of surreptitiously dangling a replica fish on the end of car park barriers in the local area. The
barriers were clearly labelled with Marsh Tackle’s website address and every time a driver arrived at the car parks the barrier would rise and pull the fish into the air as if it was a rod pulling a prized catch out of the water.

Mike Ludgate, manager of Marsh Tackle & Country Sports, is delighted at the stir that this advertising stunt has created: “We have photos of one of the car park barriers hung up in the shop. It always gives customers a good laugh.”

The idea netted the HPS Group a prestigious Gold Award at the Fresh Creative Awards 2008, held at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester on 25 September.
The Fresh Creative Awards are the UK’s biggest regional awards for advertising and design agencies. It is open to all companies outside of the
M25 and this year around a hundred and fifty agencies submitted over a thousand entries.

The Marsh Tackle fish not only won a Gold Award for HPS it was also honoured by being selected as one of only six nominations for the prestigious Big Fresh Award given for the best work in any category.