Tesco and Asda ditch one big ad for focus on ‘Christmas moments’

Tesco and Asda are moving away from launching one big Christmas ad in favour of running a number of videos, as they look to celebrate customers’ ‘Christmas moments’.

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Asda and Tesco are ditching the idea of running one big Christmas campaign in favour of shorter clips that look to put customers front and centre.

Asda’s ‘Christmas made Better’ campaign, created by Saatchi & Saatchi London and Blue 449, is made up of 26 individual moments of Christmas, moving in “rhythm with the season” and looks to build up the anticipation the British public feels in the run-up to the big day.

According to the grocer, the customer played a “key” part in the development of the approach, with in depth research and insight steering the marketing direction.

The first advert shows a Christmas dinner table scenario filled with an enormous supply of food circulating around the extended table of family and friends enjoying the day. Another ad includes a child who is faced with a ‘Big Dilemma’ – to behave or to misbehave if she wants to receive all the toys on her Christmas wish list. 

Asda claims each moment is based on real insights that customers will relate to or will make them smile. TV ads will run alongside outdoor, in-store and digital executions, as well as social media.

“Customers don’t need us to tell them how to enjoy Christmas – as far as they’re concerned, they’ve got Christmas nailed. But what customers do want is to know that they can trust Asda to offer them everything they need to make their Christmas live up to their expectations,” says Andy Murray, chief customer officer at Asda.

Solving pre-Christmas worries

Tesco is going down a similar route. The grocer is looking to solve customers’ pre-Christmas worries with its ‘Bring It On’ campaign, featuring actors Ruth Jones and Ben Miller, who have starred in the supermarket’s most recent ads.

The ad, created by BBH, sees Jones walking through the supermarket, worrying about where to put the tree, what food to buy and what presents to get. The retailer claims to have everything customers need to start planning and preparing for Christmas, so they “can make the most of the big day”. This is a similar approach to Tesco’s campaign in 2015.

Both grocers’ Christmas campaigns failed to hit home with consumers last year. YouGov BrandIndex figures showed that Asda’s purchase consideration score among consumers fell -2.7 percentage points from 32.5 points (1 November) to 29.8 (24 November). Meanwhile, Tesco saw a drop in its ad awareness score, falling -2.5% to 28.5 over the same period.

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