Staff from United Biscuits UK sales team, the well-loved producers of McVitie's Jaffa cake and Penguin biscuits, marked their annual sales conference in spectacular style recently with a successful attempt at the record for most books toppled in a domino fashion.    

Commenting on the achievement, Alan Pixsley, Senior Projects Manager at Guinness World Records said: “To achieve this challenging Guinness World Record title the United Biscuits team demonstrated patience, procession, courage and dedication throughout the entire event”

“Starting as individuals, then working in small groups to then gradually building up to working in one whole team, this was an example of team work at its world record breaking best!” 
United Biscuits group shot 
With a running motif of ‘Believe in Better’, the aim of the event in Old Windsor, West Berkshire was to motivate the 150-strong UK sales team to believe that they could improve upon their success of the previous 12 months.

The event was managed by Guinness World Records’ in house team from conception to delivery after United Biscuits had approached GWR with the brief of delivering an event that attendees would want to talk about for years to come.   

United Biscuits

The attempt would also need to exemplify the company's staff values of individuals taking personal & team responsibility to ensure they get the best results, being ambitious and dealing with all challenges with passion & energy.   

In the planning stages a scaled drawing was produced to work out the feasibility of toppling 5,500 books in the relatively small space. 

The master plan was to create a tight pattern incorporating a formation of Guinness World Records 2015 Edition books in the centre of the room to spell out ‘UBelieve’.

On the day of the attempt a grid was marked out over the conference floor, with the delegates divided into teams and given a map of their section in which to arrange their books.

The UK sales team had no idea that they would be attempting a record until the morning of the event, but with help from the GWR team, delegates went from being told about the attempt to breaking a record in a little over two hours. 

With a tough target to beat of 4,988 books toppled - a record set in March last year in Poland - the attempt would require the United Biscuits UK staff to really pull together and work as a team in order for them  to take the title.

With the book formation quickly taking shape, excitement mounted throughout the room. 

As the attempt entered the final stages of set up, one or two books were accidentally knocked over with only the lightening reactions of some delegates preventing the whole pattern falling down prematurely.

With the official adjudication about to start the atmosphere became electric - the teams had worked tremendously hard and were naturally anxious for a successful result. 

The first book was pushed and as each one knocked onto the next the room fell silent.  

United Biscuits 3
All looked good until disaster struck as the pattern neared the final stages with half a row failing to topple over - if the attempt had stopped at that point, United Biscuits would not have got the record.

Luckily a junction had created a backup option and the remainder of the books did topple over.

As the adjudicator counted up the books that did not fall over, there was still uncertainty whether this would qualify as a new Guinness World Records attempt. 

The end result was that United Biscuits did achieve the record on their first attempt with 5,318 successfully toppled books – an incredible achievement considering the conference delegates had no prior practise along with the limited amount of time they had to set up the books.

A spokesperson for United Biscuits said: “Using books in domino form was a challenging task - we genuinely did not know whether we would break the record.    

“The GWR support staff we excellent and made the day very special”.

Watch the video below.