Iceland Foods: Jungle Bells

Discount food retailer Iceland has continued to use celebrity Peter Andre to front its TV advertising.  The Christmas 2014 campaign features a range of desserts and is notable for having background music recorded by Andre himself.  He has recorded a whole album which is available exclusively in Iceland - and via iTunes.  There does not appear to be any charity tie-in with this album - something that Asda and John Lewis have set up with their Christmas music.

The ad was premiered on November 5, but to date its 16,000 viewings must be disappointing for a high profile campaign.  Andre's White Christmas album has yet to appear in the UK charts.  The campaign has perhaps been overshadowed by controversy on November 17 after the singer was reported to have poked fun at his sponsor on another TV show.  In what was described as an audience backlash, there were calls on social media for Andre to be sacked by Iceland.

Iceland actually is relatively insignificant on Twitter with just 18,000 followers (compared to Sainsbury's 300,000) and we have been hard put to find the resignation calls.  Iceland's social media pages are dedicated largely to their promotion of the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity.  In addition to the visuals on Facebook and Twitter, the company produces Celebrity themed merchandise in store, including a board game.  Almost the entire social media commentary is based around the TV show, although Iceland does incentivize its fans with prizes from time to time.



Imaginatively, it has themed displays instore where shoppers can photograph themselves in a Celebrity photomontage and share the resulting images online.  On Twitter the most commonly used hashtag is #ImACeleb.  For the moment, at least, Christmas has yet to arrive at Iceland.  No wonder the TV commercial is doing so badly on YouTube.

Peter Andre works reasonably hard for his sponsors.  On Twitter his 3.2 million fans dwarf Iceland's small following, and he is regularly linking his supporters to the supermarket's social media campaigns.

In summary: a lot of things waiting to happen. Including Christmas.  In the meantime, business as usual.