In retail, winning at Christmas is key and recent years have witnessed more brands prioritising and up weighting their marketing efforts to compete in this competitive quarter. While Littlewoods Ireland was enjoying high levels of awareness among target customers, consideration was considerably lower. We needed to create a campaign that would better resonate with our audience and earn a space in consumers’ consideration sets. This rang particularly true for our core target – Mums.
For Mum, her family is her priority. For her, they are more important than everything else going on. But with a pandemic that was still in full throttle as we approached winter 2021, it wasn’t clear whether the upcoming Christmas would be the great get together everyone was hoping for. Covid cases were rapidly on the rise, close contacts were aplenty and Mum, now more than ever, was feeling the strain. Doing her best to juggle everything on top of keeping her family safe after 18 months of uncertainty and stress was really catching up on her.
Being keen to be sensitive to the Covid situation that was at hand, we also wanted to bring the wonder of Christmas to life in an authentic and accessible way. To top it all off, putting mum at the centre of the story to say thank you for all her continued amazing work was vital. While being genuine was one thing, our approach also needed to have a meaningful message and give a clear role for Littlewoods Ireland to play. With the pandemic still in full swing and being much of a source of uncertainty, we decided to bring to life the moments that have always mattered to Mum.
In our quest to connect with her in a more meaningful way, we brought our creative teams together to identify a Christmas story that was rooted in real life. A story was shared of a small decorated box containing a kiss that was made one year in school. The simple gesture of this gift went on to become a family treasure. This special box served as a reminder of how the most important gifts are not the most expensive ones, but the ones given with love. We’d found the story we wanted to tell, and from this, our 2021 Christmas campaign “Share the Love” was born.
• THE stand out retailer at Christmas
• #1 in competitor set for unprompted awareness
• Most watched Christmas ad in Ireland in 2021
The campaign was a huge success for Littlewoods Ireland and helped them in becoming THE stand out retailer at Christmas. The results far exceeded any initial targets that were set. This saw Littlewoods Ireland not only achieving #1 in their competitor set for unprompted awareness, but it also became the most watched Christmas ad on the Official YouTube Peak Ads Chart for Ireland in 2021. Significant PR coverage and general buzz across social media also resulted in organic searches for Littlewoods Ireland peaking when the ad was released. Above all else, the campaign allowed Littlewoods Ireland to truly resonate with customers during this special time by delivering on the message that in life, love is the greatest gift that you can share.