John Lewis unveils Christmas ad starring Monty the penguin
|
Version 0 of 1. John Lewis has picked a penguin to lead a Christmas marketing campaign which is just as ambitious – and costly – as last year. The department store’s boss, Andy Street, may have pledged to keep the launch low-key, but the £7m campaign is once again bidding to be one of the media events of the year, encompassing a slick TV ad, a specially created smartphone app, story book, soft toys and in-store events including a chance for kids to see their toys brought to life with the aid of experimental gadgetry. After the success of last year’s Bear and the Hare animated ad which attracted more than 10m views on YouTube, John Lewis has raised its game with the help of Monty, a CGI-animated penguin, and some of the biggest names in the tech world. The ad, which cost about £1m to make, features a young boy and what appears to be a real penguin playing together, going sledging, visiting the park and bouncing on the trampoline to the tune of John Lennon’s Real Love sung by British singer-songwriter Tom Odell, who was used by Burberry in its online Christmas film last year. The campaign will launch on social media on Thursday. The first two-minute TV ad will run during Friday night’s episode of Gogglebox on Channel 4 following nearly a week of unbranded teasers featuring the penguin during the channel’s idents between programmes, using the hashtag MontythePenguin. That also ties into a Twitter campaign which promises to light up followers’ home pages and send a tweet to all their friends as the John Lewis-sponsored Oxford Street Christmas lights are turned on in London. Social media is now a central part of most retailers’ ad campaigns. Rival department store Debenhams, which unveiled an ad last week featuring a group of children running amok in a store after hours to the tune of Paul McCartney’s Frog Chorus, is encouraging shoppers to share selfies of the moment they find the perfect gift, in return for £1,000 giftcard prizes. Last year Marks & Spencer allowed viewers to vote on the name of the dog in its Christmas ad via social media, while Burberry, which is running its first ever Christmas TV ad this year, is simultaneously streaming it via 10 social media platforms including Tumblr and YouTube. Street said last month that John Lewis wanted to avoid over-hyping this year’s ad because it believed last year’s launch, which included a glitzy premiere at a London hotel, had irritated some customers. Waitrose, meanwhile, is taking a very different approach with its festive ad, to be launched on Sunday. In recent years Waitrose’s Christmas campaign has been fronted by chef Heston Blumenthal but this year, instead of a celebrity, the star will be 25-year-old Adejumoke Sanusi, who works behind the steak and oyster bar at a branch of Waitrose in Canary Wharf. The soundtrack will also feature members of the public. Sarah Vizard, retail expert at trade journal Marketing Week, said John Lewis’s campaign was innovative because of its use of social media and events to encourage people to visit stores as well as shop online. “John Lewis is one of the few businesses which understand that while it’s great to put something up on social media, people are looking for a Christmas experience in stores which they just don’t get online,” she said. Aldi’s Christmas ad, starring Jools Holland, will air for the first time on Thursday, when the ad from rival discounter Lidl will also have its premiere. Lidl’s ad pitches its lobsters, scallops and reindeer carpaccio against festive treats from upmarket rivals. Asda will also launch its traditional-style Christmas ad on Thursday, during Emmerdale on ITV. In the ad families smile over treats from the supermarket, to the tune of Louis Armstrong’s jazz classic When You’re Smiling, sung by former Asda worker and X Factor 2012 contestant Jahmene Douglas. Meanwhile, Iceland has Peter Andre fronting its festive campaign with a song written for its ad, Christmas Time’s for Family. The singer also recorded a seasonal album for the stores called White Christmas. How was Monty the penguin created? It may look real enough to get animal lovers calling the RSPCA but it’s pixels not feathers that make up the penguin in John Lewis’s Christmas ad. Post production house MPC, the group behind CGI animations in Planet of the Apes, World War Z and the First Direct Platypus, created the penguin by mapping the movement of Adélie penguins in the wild. Film of a penguin building its nest, for example, was used to help create the animation of Monty the penguin playing with Lego. The shot of a penguin peeking from behind a tree was rather more easily created, however – with the aid of a model penguin moved by a member of the crew. |