Analysis Of John Lewis Christmas Advertisements
Every year the nation waits in anticipation for the first sign that Christmas is on its way. We ready ourselves for the whispering cover of a classic love song and get the tissues ready for a story that will warm our hearts. Since 2007 it is fair to say that John Lewis win at Christmas adverts, and they’re also winning at social media. John Lewis 2008 Christmas advert featuring the Beatles 1st Hit So. This was the first campaign to use the now tried-and-tested John Lewis-ified piano cover, this is where John Lewis' Christmas dominance began. The advert showed a simple montage of various people of all different ages alongside their desired gift, with the tagline: 'If you know the person, you'll find the present. ' Which is Pretty basic compared to some of their later efforts. According to Craig Inglis, John Lewis' head of brand communications at the time, 100, 000 people had re-watched the ad on YouTube in its first month, and customers had requested the song online and in store; so it was popular with the British public and the start of a Christmas propaganda era for John Lewis. 2013 2013 was the first year where John Lewis really began to set themselves apart from others in terms of Christmas campaigns and advertisement.
The ad begins with "There was once an animal who had never seen Christmas, " before an animated scene shows a bear walking along with a hare on its back. When the snow falls, the bear finds a cave to hibernate in, leaving his hare friend alone for the festive season, until the hare thinks of the perfect Christmas present for the bear: an alarm clock. 2013 #TheBearandTheHare 86, 300 Twitter Mentions in the first 2 days. Increase from 2012s launch 4, 700 Tweets were sent between 7 - 8:18 alone As the image above shows, the ad was extremely popular with the public, it gained a 29% increase in popularity compared to the previous year's campaign, and within the first few minutes of the advert first being released/aired, there were nearly 5, 000 tweets about it! And within the first 2 days, #TheBearandTheHare was trending on twitter and had been mentioned by over 86, 000 people.
2014 again was a success for John Lewis with their annual Christmas advertisement campaign with 'Monty the Penguin' which is arguably the best Christmas advert that they have released to date. Watch: Monty the Penguin stars in Jo. . . 2014's advert featured a Tom Odell cover of John Lennon's 'Real Love' and stayed with the animal theme that has worked so well for John Lewis in previous years. It showed the story of Monty, a penguin who dreams of love at Christmas time. Monty turns out to be the imaginary character a young boy has built up around his stuffed toy. Twitter Mentions in the first 24 hours of the advert's launch #montythepenguin was the number 1 UK trend within 90 minutes its release. 1. 17M Times the advert was shared across social media. As the figures above show, John Lewis again beat their advert from the previous year, in terms of popularity and interactions. This time, there were nearly 100, 000 mentions from Twitter in its first 24 hours of being launched, compared with an average of 43, 000 in the previous year. We can again see the John Lewis' Christmas campaigns have gained increasing popularity year on year as within 90 mins of the 'Monty The Penguin' video being released, the video was number 1 trending on twitter and there had been thousands of tweets about it already. The statistics above also show that the video went viral with a staggering 1. 2 million shares across social media which is unheard of in terms of TV adverts. A week after the ad was released sales had hit a 5% increase on the previous year and online sales jumped by 17%; so clearly the ad was very popular with the general public.
In 2015, John Lewis released: 'The man on the moon' This time, the ad shows a young girl who attempts to contact an old, lonely man living alone on the moon, she manages to send him a telescope via a balloon, with which he manages to locate her exact position and communicate with her. Show someone they're loved this Christmas This advert again, for a 7th consecutive year, was massive in terms of popularity and online engagements, although there were a few other interactions with some twitter uses joking about the advert as seen below. John Lewis Do all your Christmas shopping with us or we Will jettison more Old people into space at the new John Lewis advert November 6, 2015 - amazing According to statistics, the overall attitude towards the advert was good with 52% of people reacting positively, 14% negatively and 32% neutral on Twitter. As seen above, the 2015 'Man on the Moon' advert was by far the most popular and successful. In 2015, the advert had gained over 170, 000 mentions on Twitter, compared to around 160, 000 from the 'Monty the Penguin' ad in 2014 which before 2015 was John Lewis' most successful ad.
Following on from previous years of successful adverts featuring animals (2013 and 2014) John Lewis pulled on the heartstrings of many, in order to raise awareness and donations for Age UK. The #ManOnTheMoon campaign which ranges from the TV ad to a 'Man on the Moon' app and merchandise, that embraces the message “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas”; just like Age UK’s “No one should have no one at Christmas”. Their 2015 campaign received an estimated 500 million impressions all over social media on the day of its launch, with 82% of Twitter mentions from the UK and a wide split of 61% female and 31% male interactions.
