The Bear, the Hare and the Holiday Season
British retailers’ Christmas TV spots are now a highlight of the marketing calendar. Embattled US retailers could learn from them.
Last week, British department store John Lewis launched its Christmas advertising campaign.
It didn’t feature prices, or this season’s merchandise, or in-store scenes, or even any people. Instead, it told the story of a woodland Christmas, in which a hare gives the gift of an alarm clock to a hibernating bear. John Lewis didn’t buy 30 and 15 second spots in the same ad break. They launched with one two-minute spot. It probably made many of its viewers cry. And it will probably be the most commercially effective campaign of the year.
If that’s not unusual enough, John Lewis’s rivals launched similarly emotional, high-budget productions the same week.
These Christmas campaigns have become an event in the UK. Mass-market tabloid the Mirror live-blogged reactions to the John Lewis spot the day of the launch. Even the high-minded Guardian published a review of the season’s Christmas campaigns. Within four days of launch, the John Lewis spot had five million views on YouTube. (Pretty good when the UK’s 62 million population is equivalent to less than one-fifth of the US population.)
The trend began pre-recession, when upmarket food and clothes store Marks & Spencer began to launch its Christmas season on TV with camp, celebrity-packed pantomimes. And it’s continued into tighter economic times and with more budget-conscious retailers. Market leader Tesco’s Christmas TV spot is an equally emotional 90-second retrospective of festive home movies.
The Bear and the Hare is the latest in a line of heartwarming Christmas TV spots for John Lewis. Their emotional approach has become one of the most effective plays in the marketing game. John Lewis recently won the creative effectiveness grand prix at this year’s Cannes Lions festival. The retailer attributes 261 million pounds ($400 million) of incremental profit to its ad campaign.
The John Lewis approach rests on two truths. Both apply just as much to the US as to the UK.
Retail contains an element of magic. People go to shops for fun and discovery. They can buy online for convenience. They can go to Wal-mart for the lowest price. Department stores are only viable if they offer something more special than range and value.
And people don’t shop rationally. They are, in the words of Professor Byron Sharp, ‘cognitive misers’. They don’t give a lot of processing power to remembering the rational difference between brands, or dissecting their offers. When they decide, they decide emotionally.
How powerful would it be for America’s great retailers to break their sell-sell-sell habit this holiday season and try the John Lewis approach? If they stopped apologizing to customers, and started tapping in to the latent magic of their brands?
Retailers that treat every media space as a catalog are ignoring these truths. And they’re missing out on the returns they could earn from a more emotional connection with their customers.
There’s no essential difference stopping them.
British retailers are under the same commercial constraints as their American counterparts. Online shopping now accounts for almost one-fifth of retail spending in the UK. And if US retailers operate in the shadow of Wal-mart, which accounts for one in every eight dollars of US retail spending, British retailers have to contend with Tesco, which takes one in every eight pounds spent on UK high streets.
British shoppers are no richer or loose with money than they are in the US. The British unemployment rate stands at 7.7%, a shade above the US rate. British household income is growing below inflation. Selling is hard work in the UK.
And it’s not as if consumers anywhere want drab brands or uninspiring advertising.
Next time you see an American retail giant flashing prices on your TV screen, remember that there are similar retailers in Britain, facing just as much commercial pressure, that are using their media budgets to make people smile, well up, and spend.
