Every Little Helps: #MakeChristmas

In the run up to Christmas 2013, supermarket Tesco laid out £25 million for TV advertising, outspending all other UK retailers.  Tesco's sales actually fell by 2.4% over the period and the company was forced to issue a profit warning.

Still from the Tesco TV ad.  Source The Guardian

Fast-forward a year and retail sector are spending another £700 million on TV advertising.  Over the past few days we have written about the John Lewis campaign featuring Monty the Penguin, and Marks & Spencer's #FollowTheFairies.  The media research firm Nielsens suggests that overall TV spending will be down slightly this year, while most other experts believe that a larger proportion of marketing budgets will be spent linking these campaigns to social media.

At the time of writing, John Lewis's Monty advertisement had been viewed 10.5 million times on YouTube.  M&S, which had debuted a day later was on on 2.5 million.  #MontyThePenguin has remained 'trending' on Twitter since the launch on 6 November.  Both campaigns have a strong narrative element; like all the best marketing, they tell an engaging story.  They are strong visually and have powerful soundtracks - videos designed to engage with audiences, 'memes' to spread via FaceBook and other social media.

Last night (Sunday 9 November) it was Tesco's turn to launch its campaign.  They booked a slot during the finale of Downton Abbey, something calculated to get them in front of 8-9 million people.  As the press has been quick to point out, if any retailer needs a profit boost right now it is Tesco. The advertisement is called Lights On, and at the time of writing has had 200,000 viewings on YouTube - a good performance in 12 hours, most of which were night time.

The Tesco hashtag on Twitter, #MakeChristmas has seen very little adoption, most of it being around the time of Downton Abbey.  Tesco's creative people use language which suggests ideas very similar to those put out by M&S last week: "doing all sorts of unexpected things to help people have a brilliant Christmas".  It is difficult to know what they have in mind: @tesco stopped tweeting some time after Downton Abbey finished, picking up again at 8:30 this morning when almost all the twitter traffic was mundane queries and complaints.

The #MakeChristmas hashtag seems to be doing little to help.  Once again, almost nothing overnight and the few uses it was getting seem to be ironic or mildly critical.   Take this from @BoringOleFart: "It would be great if your stores could just donate that wee bit more to local foodbanks". Is the video "Behind the scenes of the Tesco Christmas campaign" going to go viral? We doubt it. 244 views in a day is not encouraging. A useful little lesson for marketing students, though.

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.