Christmas is here again

After surviving both Black Friday and the office party with most of our limbs and some of our reputations intact, we at Pure Towers feel that Christmas has officially arrived.

We always hear how "Christmas is getting earlier every year", but does it just feel that way, or is it actually true?

If we initially ignore Selfridges' shamelessly opening their Christmas store 142 days in advance of the big day in August and instead use the barrage of TV Ads as the key indicator, Christmas in 2014 started on about the 6^th November.

In previous years and using the John Lewis ad as the selected example, we find that 2013 offering ‘The Bear and the Hare’ was released on the 7^th November, while in 2012 ‘Snowman’ was first aired on the 8^th November, as was 2011’s ‘The Long Wait’.

So it would appear that advertisers have traditionally decreed a week into November as the day we should have a collective turn to the mistletoe (and madness).

Thankfully for us, we’ve found a bright, young spark at the Royal Statistical Society who has done a bit of analysis on Google, examining the volume of Christmas-related searches over recent years to give an indication of when the ‘real’ people (‘consumers’ they’re called) outside of Ad Land think that Christmas starts...

...with some SHOCKING results.

In 2007, this was on 11^th November, so pretty much in line with the ads.

Over the years, this has altered dramatically:
2008: 12^th October
2010: 3^rd October
2011: 11^th September
2013 19^th August
2014 25^th August…!

Who would have thought Selfridges were right all along!? You could argue that the event drove the search activity and thus it’s somewhat of a false positive but either way, it's clear there's a market in Summer for some Christmas advertising..!

In the meantime, we’re working on a range of Christmas Jumpers that can be worn in 28 degrees.

#PurePoint

Pure Retrospective 2013

As we hurtle towards the end of an action-packed 2013, we thought it would be a good idea to draw breath and take a moment to think back over what has been a pretty interesting year. That perpetual  myth of ‘The Year of Mobile’ wasn’t realised (again!) but there does continue to be an ongoing shift in engaging consumers through multimedia campaigns and an added social media element. As our blog on the social media frenzy around Christmas campaigns showed, things are becoming ever more about engagement and less about just spot and space.

We decided to relive some of the highs (and lows) of the year which has seen some great ads and some really inventive placements. 

 

Definitely Love It

This is a classy and perfectly-pitched combination of placement, topic, creative....everything. The Guardian used a smart but sensitive ad to promote their review of Margaret Thatcher and her life. The clear divisions that Thatcherism stood for were supremely expressed in an understated and simple fashion. 

Love It...and Hate It

To keep on the Marmite theme, the controversial TV ad based on a faux-animal neglect team. This split opinions in the Pure office and led to some heated debate - which is exactly what the creative was designed to achieve. The tag line was 'Love It Hate It. Just Don't Forget It.' and the campaign ensured that this was precisely what happened.

Just HATE It

Santander's employment of Rory, Jenson and Jess (who we've nicknamed 'The Wooden Tops') creepily appearing in people's homes was one of the most appalling ads in recent memory. Three supremely wealthy sports stars selling their incredibly poor acting skills.


And one more thing - Jess' t-shirt is pink not red. Which MAKES NO SENSE! Aaaaaaand breathe....

Great Ikea

One of our favourites is the gnome campaign by Ikea - it used TV and print as the mass media platforms to generate interest and then successfully coupled this with social media for the conversation/story.

It also created a positive amount of PR by being controversial and showing “gnome slaughter” - there were over 50 complaints to the ASA (!)

 

Share a Coke:

Positives and negatives abound when looking at the Coke summer campaign. It was a fantastic and original idea, with lots of PR, #ShareaCoke social media presence and tactical print forays including Wills and Kate & Sir Alex Ferguson and David Moyes (pictured). 

 

There were supposedly 150 different named bottles, which increased our expectations when looking for ads - but it appears the reality of production costs got in the way as the lack of variety in the creative copy (e.g. only 3 names on the bus sides) left us feeling slightly like an old Coke - a bit flat. 

 

There was also 2 or 3 other campaigns running at the same time for Diet Coke and Coke Zero, resulting in mixed messages

Brian The Robot

Brian dominated our Summer - across radio, outdoor, TV, print, social media and anywhere else that he could try and "save us pounds". One of the truly multimedia campaigns of 2013, this was catchy (irritating) and ubiquitous - definitely at the forefront of the nation's consciousness! Although the controversial dogging ad (137 ASA complaints) left us all somewhat confused.com?!?!?




Big, Blue, Prickly Ad

More than just the memorable creative – a really interesting use of bus sides coupled with the strip ads which acted as high impact fractionals in press (although swiftly replaced with a more subtle creative we noted).

Should arid plants be used

for penetrative impact more often?!




BT's Struggle

Of course, how can we forget the seemingly never-ending Summer of Sports battle between BT Sport and Sky Sports.

Lesson learnt: no matter how much money you have for a campaign, no matter how high profile the celebs involved, if the relative interest isn't there the results will fall short of the ambition. Especially when trying to take on Sky!

Despite the 100's / 1'000's of ads BT Sport ran .... There was only ever going to be one winner.

 

Game changing? We think not.


Landmark lights

Quite simply a phenomenal use of the iconic London skyline to promote the launch of the Playstation4 to a mass audience and garner huge media attention - reworking the OXO Tower to feature the famous PS games console.

Christmas Ads 2013

Take a look back at the blog over recent weeks to see what we had to say about John Lewis, Sainsbury's and the likes ... Big budget, big Impact and divided opinions.

In the meantime - links below to some of the top 10 Christmas Ads featuring Aldi, Boots, John Lewis, Harvey Nichols, M&S and Waitrose.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/nov/29/christmas-ads-2013-john-lewis-marks-spencer-Video


Have a fantastic Christmas and New Year from Pure Media

So there you have it! Our high- and low-lights of 2013!

We'll be back in 2014 with our eagle eyes peeled for all advertising things weird and wonderful, clever and lazy, silly and poignant.

In the meantime, Check out our little dance and  have a fantastic Christmas and New Year!


#PurePoint

Is sharing really caring?

 #PureXmasAdWatch update


                      

This year, more than ever before, social media is at the vanguard of the Christmas ad battle, where people are sharing their thoughts and interacting as a result of exposure to the traditional advertising. It's not just a battle of the big TV ads, it's more a battle of the #hashtags and ongoing opt-in engagement levels.

There are plenty of numbers that advertisers will use to try and demonstrate their social superiority -from Twitter mentions, Facebook launch post interactions, #hashtags, YouTube views, Google+'s to number of  'Likes' to name but a few, so  we at Pure thought we'd take a look at how the campaigns that launched earlier this month are being run and indeed what results can show to date.

In our view, John Lewis has (again!) come out well on top. The crux of the argument behind this assertion is that as an advertiser we would rather have consumers consuming (i.e. watching) our ad rather than just talking about it.

Numbers such as Twitter mentions, #hashtag shares, Facebook interactions, etc. are useful data and indeed seem to suggest that there's quite a tight race going on with regards to interaction and engagement in this busy market. However, John Lewis launched their ad on YouTube 24 hours before it went 'live' on TV and it's on that platform that they have buried the others under an avalanche of views:

 YouTube views
(as at 20th Nov):

John Lewis - 7.8 million
M&S - 770k
Argos - 630k
Sainsbury's - 355k
Tesco - 320k







What's more, they have predominantly achieved their exposure through organic seeding, unlike M&S who appear to have been forced to try and combat JL's dominance by spending heavily on paid-for search. When looking at the John Lewis social campaign in its entirety, you can see that there is an excellent co-ordination of the composite parts - they all work individually but also support and enhance the others.

For example, the ad launch was coupled with a pre-emptive teaser Twitter #hashtag of #sleepingbear followed by #bearandhare as soon as it went live. On that first weekend, the John Lewis Twitter audience grew by 10% (4,000 new followers).

In contrast, Marks and Spencer have had approx. 4,000 mentions of #magicandsparkle and unforgivably, Tesco launched their ad on Twitter but failed to attach a specific hashtag, thereby surely losing both campaign theme and indeed trackability of popularity.

It's interesting to note that elsewhere, M&S has been quoted as having the most Twitter mentions (c.60million) with Tesco (49 million) and John Lewis lagging behind (45 million).

M&S have also been shown to have the edge on the competition when it comes to Facebook interactions, with 160,000 interactions to their launch post - Asda (87,000), John Lewis (71,000) and Tesco (9,000) are way behind.

Sharing is caring, but in our opinion active engagement and opt-in viewing is a far more effective result.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Pretty much all the (Christmas) cards are on the table, so over the next few weeks, we’ll be giving our comment and feedback on the efforts of some of the nation’s biggest retailers' Christmas advertising - remember it’s our thoughts that count ;)

#PureXmasAdWatch

So, let’s kick off with the big budget TV ad extravaganzas that have launched over the past week or so.

John Lewis’ bear is out of the cave to huge social and media acclaim. The #bearandhare ad has already amassed over 6.8 Million views on YouTube in just over 7 days.

M&S now stands for ‘Magic and Sparkle’ (apparently) and Sainsbury’s has wrapped Christmas Day up into a 3 and a half minute tearjerker.

Once we’ve digested these chunky ads, there’s Tesco, Boots, Morrisons, Debenham's, ASDA, Waitrose and plenty of others to get through….by which time we are well and truly stuffed like the proverbial turkey.

These big budget Xmas ads appear to have become the UK equivalent of the Superbowl advertising in America - and whilst incomparable in cost to the coveted Superbowl final ad break, one thing for certain is that the costs of the TV ads will be at an all-time high in the UK when considering the premium space. As announced recently, the X Factor final ad breaks will cost £200,000 per 30 seconds. This could net ITV somewhere in the region of £16 million. A nice present for their shareholders.

We will focus on the way advertisers are using press and the social media world in more depth in future blogs, but at this stage we are concentrating on TV, and rather than take the traditional powerhouse John Lewis as our primary candidate, we’re kicking off by taking a look at Sainsbury’s attempt at shaking things up slightly by promoting their TV ad as a film.

The ‘Taste the Difference’ brand waited until after the others had pulled their TV crackers and then started to promote the first airing of the ad in the press by directing newspaper readers to tune in and watch the ad.

The full film is reminiscent of Tinsel Town - 45 minutes long and due to have a premier as well as a release-date on YouTube. The campaign was launched in a 3 ½ minute trailer during Coronation Street. The length and exceptional nature of this media execution should ensure that it becomes a vanguard aspect of their campaign.

Repeating this ad length is clearly not sustainable or indeed possible to accommodate on Mainstream TV - so 40” and 60” spots based on different edits and themes will continue to run until 21^st December to follow on from the very strong groundwork already laid. 

M&S has a 150 second fantasy-story mash-up and the story-telling of John Lewis lasts a beefy 2 minutes but both pale in comparison to the size of this ad-break behemoth. Whether it proves a success is yet to be determined, as the multimedia element required for a successful Christmas campaign is becoming more important than ever before.

The Sainsbury’s ad delivers on  its highly successful pursuit of a ‘values-driven’ brand strategy, rather than focusing on product display, which is visible in the M&S effort and – more subtly – in the John Lewis version of Watership Down (I wonder how many alarm clocks they’ll sell this year..?).

It’s interesting how so many advertisers are choosing to focus on our emotions (trust, love, desire, greed, etc) as much as they are the cost or reliability in order to sell. ‘Value vs Values’ is a theme to keep an eye on as we head into the season of goodwill.