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.

#TheBigSmile: not much to smile about

The UK's major supermarkets are having a tough time.  Prices are dropping, smaller competitors are growing and people shoppers are deserting the mega-stores for smaller convenience shops closer to home.   Last week Asda showed it was serious about regaining market share over the crucial Christmas period when it rolled out its new campaign.  As with most other retailers, the focus is the TV advertisement.

Asda are also joining the quest to develop a meme, to encourage their message to go viral. John Lewis has shown how this can work.  Asda's posted the ad to YouTube on November 6: at the time of writing it has had 13,000 viewings.  John Lewis put on that sort of number in the first hour.

The theme of the ad is smiling, something reinforced throughout with visuals and music.  They told Marketing that "It captures those personal touches and thoughtful gestures that put a smile on people’s faces at Christmas."  It premiered on ITV during Emmerdale on November 6, which would have given them around 5 million viewers.

In our view the creative masterstroke is the soundtrack.  Jahmene Douglas, a former X-Factor runner up has recorded a cover of a classic Louis Armstrong number 'When you're smiling'.  The lyrics chime perfectly with the visuals on screen.  To encourage the meme effect Asda has gone the same route as John Lewis by releasing the music as a digital download, with most of the proceeds being donated to charities Children in Need and Save the Children.  The charities, and Jahmene himself, are promoting the song, and by extension Asda's campaign.  But while John Lewis's number entered the charts at number 21, 'When you're smiling' has yet to make it.

Similarly the hashtage #thebigsmile hasn't really taken hold as yet.  There are just a few tweets a day, many of them linking to the music.  Surpisingly the Asda Facebook page, with 1.4 million fans, mentioned the campaign on launch day but has been silent since.

On present showing the Asda campaign isn't gaining any traction.  Not much to smile about.

What Happened to The Frog Chorus? #foundit

Retailer Debenhams 'premiered' it 2014 Christmas advertisement on 8 November, during the X Factor.  This guaranteed the ad 7-8 million viewers, although it had already been released on YouTube a week earlier.  At the time of writing the advert, called Found It, had been viewed nearly 350,000 times. By comparison with John Lewis and Marks & Spencer, this is a very muted response.

While some of the business press bubbled with enthusiasm about this "compelling customer proposition", others pointed out that the company's spend on making the TV ad has been slashed by two thirds.  As we noted in other postings, retailers this year aim to make more of their budgets by using a multi-channel approach: in Debenhams case there will be a lot of point-of-sale material in store, as well as the social media side.  They also promise 200 in store hot spots.

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The theme of the ad is gift giving - or to be more correct, finding the right gift.   Like John Lewis the focus is largely on small children and cuddly toys.  Debenhams, though,  have not attempted to produce branded merchandise in the way that John Lewis has successfully done with Monty the Penguin.

Debenhams is anxious to make its investment work harder, "A broad campaign which can play out across all media - paid and owned" (according to Marketing Week).

The choice of music is not explained: the ad uses a brass band recording of Paul McCartney's 1984 single Frog Chorus.  There are no voices until the final shots where we hear "We all stand together" being sung.  This choice has given the audiences the opportunity to ridicule the advertisement: online critics mock the fact that a song about frogs is the backing track to a film featuring reindeer and cuddly bears.  The Guardian ironically wondered if the plan was for Frog Chorus to be the Christmas number one: while Asda and John Lewis have released their soundtracks to iTunes and other digital music platforms, this doesn't seem to have happened at Debenhams.

Twitter is an important part of the campaign to create a hardworking meme: @debenhams has
incentivised the use of their hashtag by offering prizes, but to date the takeup seems to have been slow. The store is trying to leverage co-creation by encouraging shoppers to take selfies with their purchases, which can go onto Twitter or their own microsite.   Debenhams have been posting thumbnails of these online, although curiously the bulk of the pictures seem to have been posed, rather being true selfies.  The Debenhams Facebook page is also working hard for them, with over 300,000 fans.

All in all an imaginative broad campaign from Debenhams, but not something that looks likely to match what is being achieved by rivals John Lewis or M&S.