Our fun social videos delivered record engagement during Christmas trading
Our brief
Morrisons were looking for brand differentiation and social engagement in the hyper competitive runup to Christmas, a vital trading period for all retailers.
Knowing that their customers – mums in particular – had a tendency to trade up (to luxury retailers) or down (to discounters), the brief was to show how Morrisons was the place to shop for a truly special Christmas. By early autumn they had an overarching campaign strategy and a TV ad, with the theme #makeitmagical, and were looking for ways to extend this idea onto their social channels.
Our solution
We created a series of stop-motion social videos showcasing fun seasonal recipes and craft projects that were brimming with festive spirit. From elf donuts (tiny iced Cheerios) to Turkish Delight vodka, strawberry Santas to Rice Krispie Christmas puddings, the ideas were cute, easy to make and highly shareable – in a word, magical.
Working with top food stylist Genevieve Taylor, we set up a Morrisons studio-kitchen for 6 weeks in November and December, producing three videos a week with multiple edit lengths. We styled and lit our studio to match the fairyland look of Morrisons’ Christmas brochure and TV ad, and synced the action in the videos to an edit of the TV ad music, providing integration with the above-the-line campaign.
All the items in the videos were available from Morrisons, and balanced low cost commodities with premium seasonal ranges to show the full product range in-store. We wrote the copy to accompany posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, seeding conversations and encouraging users to post their own magical makes. As Christmas Eve approached, we also released a series of videos of highly excited kids showing what makes Christmas magical for them.
The results
- The videos all received over half a million views on Facebook, with the highest performing – a recipe for Marmalade carrots – being watched 2.2m times.
- Likes, comments and shares increased dramatically over Morrisons’ previous social content – launch video for Turkish Delight vodka was seen 1m times, 9k likes, 7.3k comments, 4.2k shares
- Overall Facebook audience increased by 20% in the runup to Christmas, from 432k to over 550k page likes
- The campaign contributed to Morrisons’ best Christmas trading for 4 years, a return to growth which triggered a 10% boost to the company’s share price when announced in January 2016
