Challenge

Asda needed to build on the success of 2018 Christmas which was a great year for them in terms of sales and attributions. 
They also wanted to amplify their creative journey with the famous Northern Lights – alongside Jack and Tilly – and find a way for ITV to create impact and standout, and make it memorable and extra special!

To ensure that their messaging for customers was always at the core of the challenge – This was Asda’s focus:

• Making Christmas as easy as possible
• Making Christmas special no matter the budget
• You can achieve everything under one roof at Asda

Insight 

Asda’s Northern lights represent the magic of Christmas – Just a pinch of that green dust from the sky is enough to spread happiness and playfulness to the nation.  

To bring this partnership to life, ITV wanted to create that same excitement and intrigue for our audience – teasing that something magical, and extra special was about to happen.

We know our audience loves the launch of a Christmas campaign, and they enjoy it when we bring these campaigns to life using our own IP and talent across the schedule.

What better way to do this, than by using key programming across our schedule that we know our Asda customers watch. The perfect way to tap into that audience and keep them engaged and intrigued across the weekend.

We used one of our favourite Weather presenter’s Alex Beresford, the famous Emmerdale village, the RWC England final and a Saturday jam packed schedule full of teasers before the launch of Asda’s 120” incredible ad in Celebrity X Factor.
 

Activation 

We saw the creation of two bespoke weather report ads featuring Alex Beresford – telling our audience that The Northern Lights were spreading far and wide across the weekend.

This was extended with utilising the Emmerdale IP, who had a Northern Lights take-over, with two crafted ads using the Emmerdale intro before the show launched on Friday’s and Monday’s episodes.

10” Northern lights teasers were created that went out across our schedule on Saturday, featuring hits in the RWC in the morning – through to Take Me Out that same evening.

We created a bespoke Northern Lights P2P that launched Asda’s ad in Celeb X Factor, then we closed the campaign on Monday evening with a special thanks from Asda using our bespoke Emmerdale creative. 

The entire campaign was supported with a digital take-over package that launched on The Hub on the same weekend.
 

Results

Asda generated the most search interest according to Google Trends across the weekend of their Christmas campaign launch.