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Over the Christmas period, things like buying the newspaper get moved even further down people’s list of priorities. So when the festivities die away, a new year and the month of January presents the perfect opportunity to get readers back into the habit of buying a paper at the weekend.

However, the broader category continues to see declining print sales year on year. Alongside a cover-price rise that hits this weekend and not enough ‘new news’ to really hang our hat on, the commercial targets we were presented with for weekend paper sales began to look more than ambitious.

In short, we needed to sell, and sell hard.

But this isn’t a tone or behaviour that fits naturally with a brand like The Guardian. This campaign is our creative solution – or, How to do hard sell, the Guardian way. We’ll let Hugh Grant, who graciously agreed to feature in this film without a fee, take it from there.