House of Fraser & Harrods: a Tale of Two Retailers

Arguably the world's most famous department store, Harrods was at one time part of the House of Fraser group.  Now the two trade separately and compete for the same customers.

House of Fraser operates over 60 stores across the UK and Ireland, and has recently opened a store in Abu Dhabi.  They launched their TV advertisement on 14 November.  A second version was launched on 19 November, with the same theme. This was reported to be their first brand advertising on TV for over a decade, and part of a £4 million investment in branding. At the time of writing it had received a meager 17,000 viewings compared to the 17 million achieved by direct rival John Lewis. The second installment from HoF is currently scoring just over 4,000 hits.  One journalist wondered HoF had produced "the most boring Christmas advert of 2014".  However, digital measurement analyics reported that there had been a 610% jump in interest in House of Fraser as a result of the advertisement.



Curiously, House of Fraser does not appear even to have mentioned this major new piece of branding to its 300,000 Facebook fans.  It is highly proactive in providing quizzes, competitions and special offers, but no links through to YouTube apart from on the page's sidebar.  They have even put on a promotion that seems to borrow from Marks & Spencer's #TheTwoFairies idea of making gifts to random good causes.  The Facebook intiatives are largely replicated on Twitter, although the moderators there have attempted (repeatedly) to publicise the ads on YouTube.  There is no dedicated hashtag in use.

Harrods, by contrast, have produced a TV and cinema advertisement that is getting viewed and talked about.  Its animated film is striking and was described by the Daily Telegraph as "charming in a very understated way".  Harrods has far more followers on Twitter (432,000 of them) than any other UK retailer.  It has not followed John Lewis (Monty the Penguin) and Homebase (Harriet) in making its central character into a social media sensation, although it does frequently name tag its Peter Pumpernickel character.  Harrods's preferred hashtag is the predictable #HarrodsChristmas.



Harrods has announced a selfie-based competition in store featuring the mouse character.  No PP merchandise, though - a wasted opportunity perhaps, given that Monty the Penguin replicas sold out in John Lewis on day one, despite their £95 price tag.  Harrods are using Facebook and Instagram to publicise its Christmas campaign.  Once again, Harrods is immensely popular on these sites, with over 600,000 likes on Facebook.  They are constant communicators here, with most of the postings engaging effectively with Harrods fans, who 'like' the posts in their hundreds and comment frequently.  But despite their social media skills and the eye-catching quality of the advertisement, 37,000 viewings on YouTube is a disappointing return.  Particularly when contrasted with John Lewis's 17 million hits.

The Upstarts: Lidl, Aldi and #LittleSurprises

For supermarkets the Christmas season represents a chance to boost sales and profits at a time when normal rules are suspended.  According to market researchers Kantar, all of the top 5 UK supermarkets (with the exception of Asda) are losing market share.  While gains have been made by Waitrose and small multiple stores, the biggest gainers are Lidl (up 18% in the latest quarter) and Aldi (27% higher in the same period).

Jools Holland in the 2014 Aldi advertisement
Picture from MarketingMagazine

Both these stores are well established challengers to Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons.  Each of these have now rolled out impressive-sounding TV advertising campaigns for 2014.  It is important to remember, though, that the biggest spender in 2013 was Tesco, who actually lost sales during the festive period.

Lidl's campaign for the end of 2014 is part of a much larger one, based around the theme of 'Lidl surprises'.  The overall campaign (not just the Christmas part) is costing the company  £20 million (according to The Grocer) - this looks impressive except when set against Tesco's spend last year of £25 million.  Lidl, like other supermarkets this year, intend to get more value out of their advertising by linking it to social media and other channels.

The 'surprises' theme in the Lidl advertisement comes over in the reaction of the 'ordinary people' from Hertfordshire who are seen tucking into a Christmas meal prepared from Lidl groceries.  There is surprise at being served lobster at the start, and stollen for dessert. Most of all, the diners are surprised to discover the provenance of the food: they had believed that it was from Waitrose or Marks & Spencer (both named in the film).  This should come as no surprise as Lidl had named these as targets in the pre-publicity.

On social media Lidl has been promoting the campaign, and has succeeded in getting the advertisement seen nearly 300,000 times to date.  Of course this is a small figure alongside the 12 million views that Sainsbury's has achieved.  Lidl is far less active on Twitter than all its competitors with a mere 16,500 followers.  Here there seems to be a great deal of confusion, with the official Twitter feed using numerous hashtags including #LidlChristmas, #Lidler and #LidlSurprises.  The social media channels are very effective at getting over the 'surprising' new Christmas goodies in store.

Lidl has 750,000 Facebook fans, where is uses the same range of hashtags.  The campaign launch was somewhat overshadowed by Lidl introducing what was popularly believed to be a "ban" on the use of any language but English by staff in Lidl stores.  

Aldi, unlike most retailers in 2014, has opted to feature a celebrity: Jules Holland and his band appear at the end of commercial.  The theme of the advertisement, "everyone's coming to us" is a witty poke at the way Aldi is growing at the expense of established competitors.  The TV advertisement itself, launched on Novemer 5, is nowhere near as popular as Lidl's, gaining just 50,000 views to date, despite the celebrity endorsement.  However the company outscores its German rival on Facebook with over 800,000 fans.  It also has a far larger Twitter following.  Both high scores are probably attributable to the company's successful ways at 'incentivizing' its fans with competitions and offers.  There is just one mention of the TV campaign, though.

The success of Aldi and Lidl should not be overstated: much of it is attributable to locational effects - both firms are opening new stores steadily across the UK.  Their campaigns in broadcast media and online stress product quality over low prices.  But the market share figures speak for themselves: everyone is going to them.

Creating the meme: #thetwofairies

Here's a heartwarming seasonal story.  Someone sets up an anonymous Twitter account called The Two Fairies and uses it to shine little rays of sunshine into the lives of random strangers.
 Anonymous? Altruistic?  We doubt it.  This initiative is costing someone serious amounts of money.  That someone is reputed to be Marks & Spencer.  The agency behind the campaign is the highly successful London PR firm Unity.

It has the appearance of something spontaneous, but is actually being carefully orchestrated.  In today's cluttered media space, for a brand to stand out it has to do something extraordinary.  We believe that the marketing people behind @TheTwoFairies are rolling out a teaser campaign, prompting audiences to ask who is behind these amazing stunts.  Curiosity stimulated, there is a moral imperative to share the story, and in doing so it goes viral.  Result: everyone feels good about M&S in the run up to the largest retail festival of the year.

Regardless of whether or not M&S is behind this campaign, they need to do something.  Last year their high profile campaign "Believe in magic and sparkle" trailed John Lewis in the social media charts.  This year, as we have noted in an earlier post, John Lewis had had a blistering start to the season with 4 million views in the first 24 hours of their Monty the Penguin campaign.

At the time of writing @TheTwoFairies is losing the social media battle.  #montythepenguin is trending on Twitter, although it has been pipped to the post by Toy Story 4.  #Followthefairies has a presence, but only as a 'promoted' hashtag - in other words someone is now paying to try and get it noticed.

@TheTwoFairies was set up as a Twitter account on October 30.  Since then it has been delighting random people across the UK with gifts of flowers, food and other merchandise, as well as covering a Cornish primary school with snow.  The Daily Mirror and the regional press have been following the story.  It has also done well across social media.

But not well enough, if the organisers are having to pay for exposure with a sponsored hashtag?  These things are supposed to go viral.  Why aren't people bothered about who is behind these acts of seasonal kindness?  Once again the Mirror obligingly asks the questions for us, and concludes that Marks & Spencer is behind the campaign.

Behold!  So it turns out to be.  Earlier today (7 November) M&S called a press conference to admit to what they had denied to The Mirror.  The new campaign, Fly Me to the Moon, has a classic soundtrack from Julie London.

As the press coverage notes, today's announcement is all about trying to neutralize the #montythepenguin effect.   Are The Two Fairies a new meme?  Watch this space.