Tesco, Channel 4, ITV and Sky Media

The TV Family delivers a Festive First for Tesco

Christmas sees supermarkets fight to win the hearts and minds of shoppers; they up their game creatively making it the UK advertising equivalent of the ‘Superbowl’.

Our brief was to excite the nation, getting them talking about Tesco thereby attracting shoppers and increasing sales.

Tesco partnered with Sky, ITV and Channel 4 to create an industry first ‘one TV’ content partnership. We reached an impressive 21 million shoppers and helped to generate £16.8 billion sales for Tesco, contributing to a stellar Q3 and most successful Christmas ever.

In retail, the first battle is share of voice, but at Christmas you need sparkle to win. Our brief was to excite the nation with the most entertaining celebration of Christmas and get people talking about Tesco. In turn, the aim was to attract shoppers and increase like-for-like sales in the UK and ROI, all whilst celebrating Tesco’s 100th year. Success would be measured through increased talkability of Tesco and shopping at Tesco.

Tesco’s advertising campaign, ‘Delivering Christmas for 100 years’ was a brilliant foundation. It featured a time-travelling driver delivering Christmas food to parties spanning the decades crossing paths with Winston Churchill and 90’s ravers.

ITV, Channel 4 and Sky had called for a ‘brief to unite the TV marketplace’ in March 2019 at the ‘Big TV Festival’. Months went by with no response. Tesco were the first, and only advertiser to provide a brief, and it was a truly ambitious one.

Our big idea meant Tesco’s delivery driver wouldn’t just time hop in the adverts. He’d channel hop through programming, in a way that had never been done before in advertising, taking viewers on a fantastical journey whilst delivering Christmas food to shows and characters across ITV, Channel 4 & Sky.

Knowing the power of context for Tesco (2x better recall – Channel 4 Insight), we planned to create miraculous standout with content playing out in the ad breaks of the very shows where the relevant talent starred.

The idea was very complex: multiple channels, shows and talent coming together. Contractual, availability and IP complications all had to be negotiated.

With all three broadcasters behind him, Tesco’s delivery driver visited Fred from First Dates, Sky Sports legend Chris Kamara, Jamie Redknapp on A League of Their Own, C4 comedian Alex Brooker, Mercedes on Hollyoaks, the Outback Shack in I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, The Vixen from The Chase and the Loose Women.

Eight 10” pieces of content and one 30” multi-show hopping spot sat alongside bespoke social edits. All kickstarted with a pioneering three-channel launch featuring all broadcaster logos before the 30” edit (another industry first).

The team worked tirelessly to create 450 contextual buys on TV/ VOD to run in shows the talent featured in. We enhanced this with bespoke social edits to earn extra reach and resonance from the talents’ collective pool of 5.3m followers.

This has never before been attempted at this scale: It took over 50 people, 60+ meetings, in excess of 500 hours and 6 months to get this off the ground!