Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
John Lewis’ much-anticipated Christmas advertising campaign went live on Saturday evening (November 9) – and the department store group is “overwhelmed” by the public’s response to it.
In a first for ITV, John Lewis took a whole advert break in ‘The X Factor’ exclusively. Trending both in the UK and worldwide on Twitter within minutes of launching, the film has had 133,170 shares on social media, according to the Unruly Viral Video chart.
On Saturday evening, John Lewis saw 35,000 mentions on Twitter in a three hour period. The ad is the most popular UK video on YouTube with 2.6m hits, taking 24 hours to reach 1m views. Last year’s ‘Snowman’ ad took three days to reach that figure.
This year’s push takes the form of an animated festive woodland adventure and focuses on the friendship between a bear and a hare. Featuring the strapline ‘Give someone a Christmas they’ll never forget’, the story evokes the excitement of a first Christmas. It is set to a cover of Keane’s 2004 hit ‘Somewhere Only We Know,’ sung by Lily Allen.
The promotion kicked off with the 120-second TV advert on November 9 and will be supported by a combination of three shorter versions for six weeks. The total campaign cost, including all production and media, is £7 million.
Andy Street, managing director of John Lewis, said: “We’ve seen an overwhelming response from the British public to our TV advert. I don’t think anyone could have anticipated the reaction we’ve had, and while we’re surprised by the interest in the ad, we are pleased that our customers have responded in such a positive way.”
