Channel 4’s Dirty Business… The Breakdown
Breakdown
From a fountain of filth to polluted OOH: how Curious helped bring Channel 4’s Dirty Business campaign to the streets of London.
In an idyllic Oxfordshire hamlet, fish are dying in the river. Behind the picturesque setting is a much darker story, one of pollution, illness, whistleblowers and England’s water companies.
Channel 4’s Dirty Business is a fact-based drama starring David Thewlis and Jason Watkins, inspired by a decade-long investigation into water pollution in England.
For the promotional campaign, Curious was brought in to create the OOH campaign photography and assets, as well as photographing a striking public installation created for the show’s launch.
A fountain of filth
As part of the wider promotional campaign, a temporary installation appeared on London’s South Bank.
The installation featured a series of bronze-effect statues, modelled on real people believed to have been made ill by polluted waterways. Rather than water flowing from the statues, they appeared to vomit murky brown water, a deliberately uncomfortable visual designed to make the issue impossible to ignore.
Visitors could scan a QR code and hear first-hand accounts from people affected by water pollution.
Curious photographer Max Parker was brought in to capture the installation and its impact as part of the campaign’s launch photography.
Turning pollution into OOH
Alongside the installation photography, Curious worked with 4Creative designer Aimi Awang to produce a series of OOH assets for the campaign.
The work appeared across Digivans, Transvision and regional press cover wraps, extending the campaign beyond the physical installation and into the wider media landscape.
The visual language was deliberately dirty.
We used macro photography of polluted, murky water and layered it with typography that bled, distorted and warped in response to the surrounding imagery.
The result was designed to feel close-up, uncomfortable and difficult to ignore – putting the viewer right into the world of the drama.
Getting up close to the issue
Through strategic placement and provocative copy, the campaign directly confronted the water companies at the heart of the story, using the visual language of pollution to reinforce the real-world subject matter behind the drama.
For Curious, the challenge was to take an already powerful campaign idea and translate it into photography and OOH formats that could work across a range of placements and environments.
From South Bank to the street
The installation, photography and OOH work came together to create a campaign that brought the themes of Dirty Business out of the television screen and into the real world.
From a fountain of murky water on London’s South Bank to polluted macro imagery across OOH, every element was designed to make the subject impossible to overlook.
Dirty water. Dirty business. A campaign designed to get under your skin.
Read more about the campaign on LBB
Credits
4Creative
Biscuit Filmworks
Glue Society
Machine Shop
Little Parrot