John Lewis: Buster The Boxer [presentation video]

Credits & Description:

#BusterTheBoxer
John Lewis has launched its 2016 Christmas advertising campaign 'Buster The Boxer'. Set to a cover version of the song 'One Day I'll Fly Away', recorded by the British band Vaults, the two minute advert tells a magical, make-believe story of Buster the Boxer dog and his family at Christmas. The advert tells the story of a little girl called Bridget who loves to jump. Her Mum and Dad buy her a trampoline for Christmas and hide it in the garden to surprise her with on Christmas Day. However, after dark, in a magical world observed only by Buster, a cast of wildlife animals emerges - two foxes, a badger, a squirrel, and a hedgehog - who discover the trampoline and have fun jumping. On Christmas morning, Bridget excitedly runs out into the garden to discover her present however Buster bounds past her and starts bouncing on her trampoline - she watches him wide-eyed. As the story brings to life some of Britain's most-loved wildlife, John Lewis has chosen The Wildlife Trusts to be this year's Christmas campaign charity partner. It was directed by Dougal Wilson who also directed three previous John Lewis Christmas adverts including 2011's The Long Wait, 2012's The Journey, and 2014's 'Monty's Christmas'. Agency: adam&eveDDB London.
Media: TV
Category: Retail services
Client: John Lewis
Agency: adam&eveDDB London
Country: United Kingdom
Director: Dougal Wilson

Clients: Craig Inglis: Customer Director & Rachel Swift: Head of Marketing, Brand &
Social
Agency: adam&eveDDB
Chief Creative Officer: Ben Priest
Executive Creative Directors: Richard Brim, Ben Tollett
Copywriter: Ben Stilitz
Art Director: Colin Booth
Chief Strategy Officer: David Golding
Planning Partner: Martin Beverley
Managing Director: Tammy Einav
Business Director: Miranda Hipwell
Account Director: Caroline Grayson
Account Manager: Alice Child
Producer: Panos Louca
Assistant Producer: Sion Prys
Media Planning
Media Company: MGOMD
CEO: Tim Pearson
Executive Director, Head of Planning: Clare Peters
Head of Retail: David Bratt
Client Account Director: Andrew Darby
Client Account Director, Digital: Ric Roberts
Film
Production Company: Blink Productions
Director: Dougal Wilson
Producer: Nick Goldsmith
DOP: Joost Van Gelder
Production Manager: Hannah Fowles-Pazdro
Production Assistant: Jack Bingham
Post Production Company: MPC
VFX Executive Producer: Julie Evans
VFX Producer: Hannah Ruddleston
VFX Line Producer: Sandra Ekland
Creative Director VFX, MPC: Diarmid Harrison-Murray
Colourist: Jean-Clément Soret
Shoot Supervisor: Tom Harding & Tito Fernandes
VFX Supervisor 3D: Fabian Frank
VFX Supervisor 2D: Tom Harding
Animation Supervisor: Tim van Hussen
3D VFX Team: Chloe Dawes, Anthony Bloor, Ben Thomas, Graham Cristie, Jessie
Amadio, Julien Labussiere, Luca Maccarelli, Matthew Gifford, Radu Ciubotariu, Tito
Fernandes, Tushar Kewali, Vincent Ullman, Will Laban, Hanna Binswanger, Max
Mallmann, Jessica Groom, Ankit Dheraj Toppo, Earnest Victor, Ganesh Kumar S., Bibin
Balan P, Gayatri Patel, Jyoti Prakash Panda, Manjunath Ramakrishnaiah, Inigo Vimal Roy,
Ria Banerjee, Gayatri Patel, Gerard Dunleavy
Animation Team: David Bryan, Boris Cailly, India Barnardo, Martyn Smith, Lou Thomas,
Cynthia Collins
2D VFX Team: Grant White, David Filipe, Andreas Feix, Alex Snookes, Venkatesh
Rajagopal, Ginesh Gandhi, Jonathan Box, Amresh Kumar, Padma Priya, Prasanth
Palaparthi, Rajesh Kumar, Shalwin Shaiju, Yasasvini. V, R Vignesh, S. Samson Samuel,
Shalwin Shaiju
Soundtrack name and composer: One Day I’ll Fly Away, Randy Crawford
Performed by: Vaults
Music Supervision Company: Leland Music
Music Supervisors: Abi Leland & Ed Bailie
Sound Company: Factory
Sound Design & Mix: Anthony Moore
Audio Producer: Becs Bell
Editing: Final Cut
Editor: Rick Russell
VR Experience
Production Company: MPC Creative
Executive Creative Director, MPC Creative: André Assalino
Interactive Creative Director, MPC Creative: Pete Conolly
Executive Producer: Dan Phillips
Lead Producer: Joana Flor
Senior Interactive Producer: Joana Guimarães
Interactive Production Assistant: Sinead Catney
Lead Tech Artists: Pablo Bravo and Cat Dixon
Lead UE Developer: David Pereira
UE Developer team: Dennis Ippel, Guiseppe Mattiolo, Thomas Lopez, Olivier Dumas,
Bertrand Leroy
Lead Unity Developer: Tim Porteous
Unity Developer: Vitor Castanheira
Front and Back-end Developer: Pedro Rocha
UI Designer: Gorkem Menekse
VFX Supervisors: Kumar Chandrasekaran – VFX HoP; Sean Mullen – VFX Creative
Director; David Kern – VFX Technical Director; Selvam Venkatesan, Praveen Madhyasta –
Animation; Anil Kumar Singh - Rigging
VFX Artists: Matthew Gifford; Tushar Kewlani; Raju Ganesh; Baskaran Seetharaman ;
Pritesh Krishnappa Kotian; Atheesh Sankaran; Ashish Kumar Chourasiya; Shivam Pandey;
Krishnendu Bikash Maity; Yogesh Gadge; Ganesh Mohan; Mithun Monga
Shashi Prakash Raj; Vivek Mangainath; Dhanesh Puthiyavalappil; Harwin Sebastien;
Srinivasa Sheelam; Aditya Shukla; Sminesh Sudevan
Senior VFX Producer: Tomek Zietkiewicz
VFX Production Supervisor: Devendra Kumar
VFX Producer: Prithi Amarnath
VFX Production Assistant: Lokesh Reddy
Tech Artist: Pravenn Thanvi
DMP: Michelle Tolo
Motion Designer: Jonny Eveson
Sound Design: 1618 Digital
Sound studio: ClearCut
VO Artist: Faye Ripley
Interactive, Print & Social
Interactive Creative Director: Till Diestel
Lead Interactive Producer: Budr Elnusairi
Integrated Producer: Laura Smith
Assistant Producers: Naomi Barrie, Laurelle May
Interactive Design Lead: Andrew Murray
Project Managers: Hatty Day, Hannah Dowty
Head of Design: Paul Knowles
Designer: Olly Watts
Design Company: King Henry
Head of cain&abel production: Brett Kelsey
Editor: Hannah Taylor
Editor: Joe Andrews
Editor: Paul Cheshire
Editor: James Ireland
Motion Graphic Designer: Ed Christie
Photographer: Noemie Bottiau
Interactive Designer: Adrian Baker
Interactive Designer: Megan Young
Interactive Designer: Jennifer Slack
Interactive Designer: Hashir Khan
Interactive Designer: Norman Lo
Bookings Manager: Serena Moll
Interactive Resource Manager: Jacinta Crane
Interactive Partner: Simon Adamson
Social Media Director: Viki Imrie
Social Media Strategist: Jess Taylor
Social Media Manager: Lauren Booty
Outcome:
64.36 million views on social, 1.3m shares.became the most shared and liked advert in the UKwent viral, 93% of online views on mobile were organic.#1 global trend on Twitter 50minutes after launch. #1 viewed Christmas advert on YouTube.On launch day it was trending ahead of the US election results from the previous dayhelped increase brand searches by 25.5% and creative searches by 76.5% on Google.broke Sky 24hour download record, receiving over 721,000 combined unique downloads in just one 24hour period, over 900k views in the first weekend alone.mentions on TV; This Morning, Have I Got News For You, Lorraine.more parodies than ever before. Most popular spoof featured the US presidential candidates as Bridget and Buster, viewed 113m times and shared 1.64m times.achieved more views, shares, likes, engagements, downloads, user generated content, press coverage, than any other Christmas campaign in the UK.
Campaign Description:
‘Buster the Boxer’ is the story of a little girl called Bridget who loves to bounce and her pet dog, Buster. When Bridget's mum and dad buy her a trampoline for Christmas, they soon discover that she isn’t the only one with a passion for jumping. When a group of hand-animated, photo-real CGI garden animals emerge from the undergrowth and discover the new object, they slowly learn the joy of bouncing. The action is observed by the family dog, who finally on Christmas morning leaps to have a try himself. Buster, the hero of our campaign, was exploded out into a range of channels where he helped bring even more joy to the festive period.
Strategy:
To develop thoughtful gifting through a joyful story within a suite of integrated owned, paid for and ultimately viral channels - telling a story with broad appeal to the UK general public.
Execution:
The campaign was teased on social with 3 short films, before launching online and on TV with a two-minute advert. A media first partnership with Sky that allowed viewers to download the advert and experience that ‘first watch moment’ through their Sky+ planner.The campaign extended to playful new channels such as a branded Snapchat lens, a fully immersive VR trampoline experience that combined Oculus Rift, Leap Motion and Kinect technologies in our flagship store (first time that a brand has used these technologies together). A 360 video on Google Cardboard VR allowed younger children to join in with the fun in-store and extended the experience into the homes of our customers. There was also a range of official merchandise, spectacular windows, in-store activations, social activity, thank you films for our biggest fans, opportunities to invite the animals into your world, books, branded bags, out of home, emails, etc.
Synopsis:
John Lewis is famous for Christmas advertising - every year telling the story of thoughtful gifting (the core strategic platform that remains pivotal to the communication) in a new an interesting way. The work is highly anticipated, with chatter and speculation starting in the summer time in the UK, and so loved that it’s launch regarded by many as the start of the Christmas season.So the brief in 2016 was to continue to develop our position around owning thoughtful gifting, creating our most loved, shared and talked about campaign to date.Over the last few years, John Lewis’ Christmas campaigns have captured the hearts of the nation and driven significant ROI. Every year the stakes are raised, with increasing media and public interest alongside increasing retail and advertising competition. Christmas is John Lewis’ most important trading period, responsible for close to 40% of annual profits.
Relevancy:
‘One Day I’ll Fly Away’ complemented the creative and chimed with a nation reeling from the global events of 2016. A nation in need of escapism was able bound alongside Buster the Dog and leap onto the trampoline of life. One Day I'll Fly Away demands a vocalist of incredible, range, power and control. The end result delivers on all fronts, a performance fueled on emotion that is only matched by the 60 piece Orchestra that filled Abbeys Roads Studio 2.