Durex · McCann Content Studios, McCann London · United Kingdom · October 2026
Sean Dyche has been given a new job: helping Durex get Wood rising. Woodley United, to be precise, a non-league football club in Berkshire. ‘Get Wood Rising’ puts him in charge of a season-long push up the table, giving Durex a whole football season’s worth of opportunities to talk about performance. A club called Wood. A manager who can keep a straight face. You can see why they signed him.
The Challenge
Durex wanted conversations about sexual performance to feel more open, relatable and less intimidating, while supporting its Performance condom and gel range. Clinical language makes the subject sound like a diagnosis. The brand needed a register people already use without blushing.
What They Did
A hero film opens a season of documentary-style episodes on Meta, TikTok, Durex's own channels and influencer feeds. Dyche, the former Burnley, Everton and Nottingham Forest manager, takes a fictional role at Woodley, with comedian Chris McClure's Sunday-league manager character, Steve Bracknall, as his assistant. Both wear Durex tracksuits; the squad's kit carries the logo too. Dyche holds up a tube of gel and declares it 'utter wet nonsense', tells the players to slow down and enjoy themselves, and hands out condoms as homework.
Why It Works
Durex picks football, where performance, confidence and going up are everyday talk. Fly-on-the-wall football documentaries are about pressure and nerves anyway, so the format carries the subject without strain. Durex found Woodley United on the map, and a real fixture list gives the joke a whole season to run, and a real club makes the innuendo feel like banter rather than a brief.
Creative Deviance: Provocation
Condom ads show bedrooms or the box. Durex puts a former Premier League manager in a non-league dressing room. The provocation comes from a genuine consumer tension rather than shock: people find performance hard to talk about, and football lets them talk about little else. With Durex across every tracksuit and shirt, the innuendo can't drift to anyone else.
The Tactic
Pure Language Mechanics Wordplay → Taboo-Relief Double Meaning
What to Steal
Search the map before you write the script. Woodley United already existed, with a name that tells half the joke. A real place, team or person whose name carries your double meaning brings credibility and material you couldn't script. Before inventing a world, check whether the world has already made the pun for you.
The Question That Could Get You There
What cheeky double meaning could make an embarrassing subject easier to talk about?
