Littlewoods and the Repositioning of Myleene Klass

A few days ago we reported on the launch of Littlewoods's Christmas TV advertising, as well as the detailed on-the-ground campaign that was planned to back it up.  Core to the campaign was the figure of Myleene Klass.  While competitors such as Marks & Spencer and John Lewis had in previous years invested heavily in celebrities for their Christmas campaigns, the trend in 2014 has been to save money and focus on developing the brand narrative.  Apart from Littlewoods, the only major retailers to use celebrities this year have been Morrisons (with Ant and Dec) and Iceland (with Peter Andre).

Myleene Klass's Twitter picture: a brand repositioning?

Using celebrities has always been popular with brands as they raise the profile and gain you popular recognition.  In the digital environment, too, the celebrity's fanbase on Twitter and FaceBook is usually far larger than the retailer's, and we can see Peter Andre in particular working this resource effectively for the benefit of his employer.

Littlewoods this week have seen a massive boost to their visibility through the involvement of Myleene Klass, but probably for the wrong reasons.  The controversy started on 17 November when she appeared in a TV debate with politician Ed Miliband, the leader of Britain's Labour party.  Klass energetically laid into Labour's plans for a so-called Mansion Tax.
 
Over the following days, much of the popular press focused on Milliband's discomfort - and so the controversy did not undermine the Littlewoods brand.  But Labour then produced a response almost tailor-made for the social media age: Milliband's PRs used the phrase "pure and simple" - a direct reference to the 2001 pop single from a made-for-TV band called Hear'Say, featuring a then unknown Myleene Klass.  The original tweet announcing this, at the time of writing, has been re-tweeted 900 times and has been favourited 444 times.

Almost immediately, online and in the mainstream media Myleene Klass became a target of derision.  The Daily Telegraph called her "a deadly force of nature":  Klass's rhetorical question in the original TV debate "have you seen what [£2 million] can get you? It’s like a garage" became a meme in itself, with social media users only too happy to provide answers.  As a result the Klass brand which was originally aligned with popular TV reality shows such as I'm a Celebrity came to be more associated with wealth and privilege.  The so called Mansion Tax that Klass was taking issue with would affect just 1% of the houses in Britain, with their millionnaire residents being unlikely ever to be Littlewoods customers.  Her intervention certainly generated publicity for Klass (and she was not slow to use it to promote a possible Hear'Say comeback).

Klass and Miliband in the original TV debate: picture Daily Mail

The publicity also meant that pre-arranged parta of the Littlewoods Christmas campaign got far more publicity than they might have done prior to the media storm.  Obligingly, the Daily Mail's "exclusive" on 19 November never even mentioned Mansion Tax.  While this may have been a damage limitation exercise by Klass and Littlewoods, it had little effect. On the same day an online petition was started to have Klass dropped as the face of Littlewoods citing her “deeply insensitive and ignorant comments”.  This then sparked a counter petition calling for the anti-Klass petition to be withdrawn.

Meme and counter meme: at the time of writing, there are 15 times more people wanting Littlewoods to drop Klass than there are digital voters wanting the 'drop Klass' campaign stopped.  Klass herself is being uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter.  As we noted with John Lewis's Monty the Penguin meme, the popular counter-blast does not necessarily harm the original.  It may be a different matter for Littlewoods.

Littlewoods: #CelebrityWishes

Image from Event Magazine

Celebrities feature in the 2014 TV commercial from Littlewoods.  The ad's theme is one of pantomime, as the characters appear to be acting out Aladdin on stage, complete with celebrities Myleene Klass and Christopher Biggins.

This creative execution is likely to be less controversial than their 2011 offering which received more than 450 complaints.  The ASA, the UK's advertising regulator, refused to investigate, and a lively debate started online about the merits of the campaign.  Most of the comments were negative to Littlewoods. Audience engagement, yes; a social media meme, perhaps not.

Many people watching the ads will be unaware that Littlewoods no longer has a presence on the High Street having started closing stores in 2004-5 and moved to online trading.  It is now in a highly competitive sector, up against slick online-only operations like Amazon as well as the online trading sites of other retailers.

The 2014 advertising, both on broadcast TV and online, links closely to the firm's shopping portals.  The ad itself is full of products and gift ideas.  Klass has a role as a fairy magically transforming gifts (something happening in this year's advertising from M&S which features two fairies). Klass's role in transforming wishes is part of the message to be developed on social media, themed around #LittlewoodsWishes (see below).  Biggins is there for comic relief.

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The TV campaign started on November 7, during the commerial break for Coronation Street, something which should have given Littlewoods around 7.5 million viewers.  At the time of writing the Youtube video had a respectable 350,000 viewings. A punchy soundtrack is delivered by Sam and the Womp's Bom Bom.  Littlewoods don't appear to have any plans to commercialize this in the way that Asda and John Lewis have done, where specially recorded tracks have been made available for download on iTunes and other platforms.  Myleene Klass is a talented classical musician in her own right, but her appearance here has more to do with her role as a 'brand ambassador' and fashion designer for the store.

The pantomime theme is not a random creative choice.  It highlights Littlewoods's deal with the Ambassador Theatre Group where Littlewoods are sponsoring pantomimes in 10 UK locations.  Tied into this is an ambitious 'Christmas Wishes Tour' which will travel to the cities involved (including Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow) with a themed combination of entertainment and retailing designed to put Littlewoods back into city centres.   The designers claim that  "This is a great example of experiential and digital out-of-home working hand-in-hand to drive customer engagement with the Littlewoods brand. The immersive nature of the activity, along with on-site technology and prizes, brings the brand to life and into consumer’s hands."

The tour will give Littlewoods the chance to develop a social media campaign around the hashtags #ChristmasWishes and #LittlewoodsWishes.  M&S is doing something similar with its #FollowTheFairies campaign.  Both campaigns are interesting examples of where retail brands are combining broadcast messages with online narratives linking into real-time, face-to-face engagement. Littlewoods is going further than most by using NFC technologies at their events to entice customers into their online stores via their smartphones.  We would expect to see Littlewoods using Klass and Biggins at these events.

Littlewoods have made brief reference to the new campaign on their Facebook pages, where they have approaching 200,000 fans.  Similarly, there has been a half-hearted promotion of #ChristmasWishes and #LittlewoodsWishes on Twitter where they have a more modest 39,000 followers. Myleene Klass is far more active in this medium, and tweets almost constantly to her 450,000 followers, including linking to her work for Littlewoods.  Christopher Biggins is quiet by comparison although this might change as #LittlewoodsWishes is ramped up.

Overall this is turning out to be an imaginative campaign with the various elements carefully thought through.  The mix of online and real-world, shopping and entertainment, should work well.  Currently, though, the focus is very much on engagement equaling transactions, and the social media elements have yet to get going.