- McFly's Danny Jones returns as the face of Greene King's "Live at Your Local" campaign, bringing 900+ free grassroots gigs to Greene King pubs across the UK this summer.
- New OnePoll research backing the campaign found only 8% of UK music listening happens at live events, yet gig-goers discover four times as many new artists per year as people who never attend.
- This marks Jones's second consecutive summer fronting the initiative; he'll help judge the Greene King Untapped talent contest, taking over ambassador duties after Sam Ryder served as the brand's "Head of Gigs" in 2025.
- Greene King paired the campaign with neuroscientist Dr Julia Jones ("Dr Rock") to explain the science behind why shared live music sticks with people longer than solo streaming.
Greene King has brought Danny Jones back to front its “Live at Your Local” campaign for a second summer, pushing Britain to listen to music together instead of alone.
New research the pub chain commissioned found UK fans do two-thirds of their listening solo, racking up 379 solitary hours a year, while just 8% of listening happens at live shows. Yet gig-goers discover four times as many new artists annually as people who skip live music entirely.
To back the numbers up, Greene King enlisted neuroscientist Dr Julia Jones (“Dr Rock”), who argues a live performance’s full-body sensory effect can’t be replicated through headphones and helps build lasting memories and friendships.
Jones, a founding member of McFly, will help judge Greene King Untapped, the brand’s nationwide grassroots-talent search; the winner gets a slot at Pub in the Park 2026, £10,000, and studio time at Metropolis Studios.
He steps into judging duties after Sam Ryder fronted Greene King’s 2025 “Biggest Pub Gig Ever” as the chain’s first-ever Head of Gigs. This year’s Live at Your Local expands to more than 900 pubs, up from 870 in 2025, extending Jones’s existing ties to the brand.
The partnership lands as McFly heads into a run of summer outdoor dates, including Rochester Castle and Borde Hill Parklands, off the back of their arena tour with Busted. Jones’s commercial slate stays busy elsewhere too, with past campaigns for Samsung, Ovo Energy, Amazon, and AHDB’s “Let’s Eat Balanced.”
Musicians fronting grassroots-focused brand campaigns are having a moment: much like Mackenzie Carpenter‘s debut national deal with Beer Girl put an indie beverage brand behind a rising artist, and Big Jay Oakerson‘s ambassador role for Labatt USA leaned into live comedy culture, Greene King is banking on Jones’s own roots playing pubs and small venues.
Takeaways
This isn’t a one-off sponsorship, it’s a returning ambassadorship, and that’s the real story here. Jones isn’t reading a script about pub culture, he’s someone who actually played the small rooms this campaign is trying to keep alive.
That’s a sturdier bet than a splashy one-year stunt. Grassroots venues across the UK have been shutting down at a worrying pace, so tying a well-liked musician’s credibility to keeping pub gigs going gives Greene King’s marketing real cultural weight, not just reach.
Could Jones’s multi-year involvement turn Greene King into UK music fans’ go-to summer destination, the way Sam Ryder’s “Head of Gigs” stint built momentum in 2025? With McFly touring outdoor UK dates all summer, how much of Jones’s actual bandwidth goes toward showing up at these pub events versus just fronting the campaign?
