Creative impulse

Switching their attention from print to broadcast work, Madame Tussaud'swill be running a new ad campaign in cinemas into the summer months. The 60-second film personifies a selection of the famous people on display in the wax museum as candles: Pavarotti, for example, is represented by a fat, purple candle, while Hugh Grant appears as a single white candle - covered in pink lipstick kisses (see right).

The client: Madame Tussaud's

Nancy Mitchell, marketing manager

Most of our advertising has to appeal to both our domestic and overseas visitors, so in the past we have focused on outdoor media to catch commuters and travellers to London. With this new campaign we are seeking to appeal specifically to the domestic market. We went for cinema advertising because of its younger profile; it's the 16-34 age group we wish to target.

Most of our visitors are young adult pairs, which you might find surprising. What we are hoping is that they will enjoy their visit and will come back when they're older with their kids. What our research has found is that, even though everybody knows Madame Tussaud's, many tend to have visited once when they were young but haven't returned recently.

The agency: J Walter Thompson

Sabine Richards, account director

Londoners think that Madame Tussaud's is a bit boring - a tourist trap. People see the queues and think it's the sort of place they can put off. This latest campaign was designed to appeal specifically to Londoners, and could be more sophisticated than the ads we run on the Underground because we didn't have the problem of the language barrier that we have to address in appealing to foreign visitors. We were aiming to show that it's got a sense of humour.

It's very difficult to make film ads for Madame Tussaud's because the portraits just don't film well. The figures just look uninteresting. Whereas when you visit you can touch them and see how big or small they are compared to you. That's why we made the connection to wax through candles.

We wanted to show a broad range of people, to reflect the breadth of Madame Tussaud's, but had to go for people with physical personality traits that could be shown in this way. We've had a number of reports that the ad is meeting with spontaneous applause, which means it's going down well.