Marks & Spencer: Christmas With Love [image]

Credits & Description:

Title: Christmas With Love
Agency: Y&R London
Brand: Marks And Spencer
Country: United Kingdom
Entrant Company: Y&R London
Advertising Agency: Y&R London
Media Agency: Mindshare, London
Production Company: The Mill, London / Wave Studios, London / The Quarry , London / Smuggler, London / Native, London
Creative Director: Psembi Kinstan (Y&R London)
Creative: Alice Burton (Y&R London)
Executive Creative Producer: Danielle Sandler (Y&R London)
Assistant Producer: Carmela Vitale (Y&R London)
Director: Tom Hooper (Smuggler)
Producer: Molly Pope (Smuggler)
Director Of Photography: Justin Brown (Smuggler)
Costume Designer: Paco Delgado (Smuggler)
Production Designer: Robin Brown (Smuggler)
Editor: Paul Watts (The Quarry)
Sound Design Arrangement: Parv Thind (Wave)
Managing Director: Dan Neale (Native)
Composer: Rachel Portman (Rachel Portman)
2d Lead: Andrew ‘Barnsley’ Wood (The Mill)
Head Of 3d: Rob Holmes (The Mill)
Campaign Description:
It’s a tale as old as Christmas; every year Santa gets all the attention and accolades and Mrs. Claus stays quietly in the background. Just another housewife defined by her husband. But this year, Marks and Spencer’s empowering campaign changed her for good. We created Mrs Claus for the 21st century and introduced her to the world in an epic film directed by Academy Award winner, Tom Hooper. The heartwarming film launched on social media and saw her help a troublesome little boy make his sister’s Christmas. She flew a helicopter, read erotica, ate as many mince pies as she wanted, and became the biggest thing at Christmas since, well, her husband.
Relevancy:
Mrs Claus was an interactive campaign that ran across more than a dozen different media. It included creating a world first emoji for Mrs Claus that Twitter users could add to any tweet (this alone was used over 50,000 times). We ran gifting promotions on social media, where social media followers added their friends to Mrs Claus’ nice list to receive a gift, and we encouraged women across the UK to write to Mrs Claus online (she responded to every single message).
Outcome:
We believe that one of the smallest stats is also the most powerful in demonstrating the change Mrs Claus made to empower girls and women: this year, for the first time, the Royal Mail reported that thousands of girls wrote to Mrs Claus.“In 2016 every little girl should know that she's just as capable as any boy. Thank you M&S.” - The Telegraph “The only Christmas campaign your daughter should watch” - Stylist“A feminist manifesto about female empowerment” - Metro “M&S wins Christmas” - The Sun65 million unpaid views across the globe.1.2 billion media impressions.The original soundtrack reached #1 on the global iTunes Classical chart.M&S had their first sales growth in six years.Mrs Claus was widely hailed as the best Christmas campaign of 2016 (by the Evening Standard, The Sun, The Daily Mail, Express and Metro amongst others).
Execution:
The 3 minute film was shared on social media – supported by shorter lengths on TV directing to the full film online. We hid dozens of funny moments in the background of the shots – that could only be spotted when viewers on social media paused the film. These included the name of her helicopter (R-Dolph 1), her snowmobile (Dash-R) and the name of the book she reads (50 Shades of Red). Eagle-eyed viewers spotted these jokes and made the name of her erotica, 50 Shades Of Grey, trend on twitter for 3 days.
Strategy:
The film was supported by a range of activity around it. There has always been a Santa Claus emoji but never one for Mrs Claus. So we partnered with Twitter to create the world’s first Mrs Claus emoji. It was used over 50,000 times.Mrs Claus launched Channel 4’s festive programming live on air during an ad break takeover, gave interviews in magazine partnerships, and took over M&S’s social media accounts, responding in real-time to news, events and every single customer tweet. As Christmas approached, the nation followed her story in dozens of short films she posted to Facebook. And this year, Santa wasn’t the only one giving out gifts. Mrs Claus delivered 15,000 of her own, not with an old fashioned sleigh, but via twitter.
Synopsis:
For five consecutive years, M&S’s sales had dropped by an average of 3.86% year-on-year.In 2016 their sales and share of voice were declining faster than every before - during just three months their share price slumped 35%. Our challenge was to reverse this trend by reconnecting M&S with their core audience, 50+ y/o woman, at Christmas… the most competitive advertising period of the year.