Britain's OnDigital gave Mother two months to put a campaign together for the launch of their new brand, ITV Digital. The brief was tough: take a sinking pay TV channel (with 150 fewer channels and less football coverage than its main competitor), give it a new name, and try and sell it to people who've been watching free television all of their lives. Anyone else would have been stumped.

Mother strategist George Bryant describes the agency's initial insight into the brand's problem: "Digital television in this country is a massively confused market. As a brand we had to champion a better level of understanding in the country as a whole. We saw that ITV Digital should become a sort of people's champion to help people understand the digital future. What we wanted to do with the campaign was to answer people's questions. Why pay for it? What should I do with it?"

Educating people would in itself have made a successful campaign, and been a public service to boot, but Mother didn't stop there.

In the spring of 2001, Monkey was born. The two-foot, knitted toy formed half of a comedy duo with a flatmate named Al. In the grand tradition of Beavis and Butthead, the pair became the UK's ultimate TV watchers in spots directed by the likes of Hammer & Tongs' Garth Jennings and Mother's own Mark Waites.

"Al is fat, he sits around, a bit naïve, sort of amazed at what he's experiencing. He asks the questions. And his best friend in the world is a stuffed puppet monkey who sits on the la-z-boy next to him and kind of knows the answers."

The cute, clever, confident and occasionally surly puppet was loved by an impressive 96% of the population within six weeks of his first appearance and the station was inundated with requests for the toy. ITV refrained from merchandising on the grounds that "Monkey is his own man" and couldn't be just a cuddly toy. Almost 50 knitting patterns were independently developed and marketed, and over 1,000 fan sites sprung up on the Web. Monkey made appearances on talk shows, attended sporting events and movies, and even visited nightclubs. He was voted the UK Favourite Celebrity of 2001.

Does public hysteria over a puppet constitute good branding? No, Bryant says, but in this case, yes. Within six weeks the brand had gained 80% awareness amongst its target market (the vast and disparate viewing public). Six months later, ITV was winning 70% of all new subscribers, greatly reducing the 80% market share of their lead competitor, Murdoch's Sky Digital.

"This wasn't just shameless publicity. This was a means of solving ITV Digital's business problems."

Of course, nobody expected miracles. ITV's flawed business plan kept it on the rocks until the incremental costs of new subscribers eventually sunk the company for good in April.

With the closure of ITV digital, Monkey is officially unemployed. But Coca-Cola spokesperson Max Headroom had no problem landing a new job after his campaign played out. Offers have been piling in from all corners of the British entertainment industry and Mother suspects that there's life in that puppet yet.