CMO boots on the bottomless Christmas gift bag carrying its most integrated campaign ever



Boots Street Chemists have launched its major Christmas advertising campaign. The Drum speaks with its Marketing Director, Pete Markey, to find out more.

The integrated campaign, #BagsOfJoy, stars Bafta-nominated actress Jenna Coleman as titular Joy. Viewers can follow her wonderful journey as she discovers her bottomless sack of goodies and uses it to give Christmas presents to everyone she loves.

The campaign is carried out by The Pharm, the WPP partnering team dedicated to the Wallgreens Boots Alliance, and has been led by Tom Hooper. It benefits from the production design of Eve Stewart and a 45-piece orchestra, recorded in the iconic Abbey Road Studios, conducted by Rachel Portman OBE – the first female songwriter to win an Oscar.

Boots says that the “extraordinary protagonist of the campaign … is the bag itself,” not Coleman’s Joy. And the object serves as a metaphor for Boots stores across the country to be able to do without such joy with everyone.

Markey proudly presents what he said was Boots most integrated campaign ever. Over the years, he’s always sought to connect the Christmas feel-good factor to in-store footfall and sales, and some new technology this year – such as programmatic TV and radio and outdoor signage – may. do just that.

The campaign will use first-party data to personalize some of the advertising experiences. This will be easier to do with some 15 million Advantage Card customers. These efforts are also coming to the TV space with purchasable ads – Markey says there is a media debut partnering with Sky Media. These product-driven purchasable TVCs with QR codes will work on some video-on-demand platforms including ITV and Channel 4.

Marketing needs “immediacy”. Markey wants viewers to be able to “get this giveaway immediately.”

Markey is amazed by the adoption of the QR code over the past year and finally believes that the UK public can and will use them to purchase products in their stores.

Although some advertisers entered the market at the start of this year, Boots has not budged – this really is the “key moment”, evidenced by the fact that M&S ​​and John Lewis are launching announcements at exactly the same time. Markey says, “There are some very strong overlapping trading plans with this launch. We have a whole month of specials for Black Friday … so it’s just a good time for these things to work together probably more closely than they have before.

Markey joined Boots in early 2021, when the brand was researching the results of the previous year’s campaign. His summer campaign, “Feel Good,” was his “first big” run for the brand.

“It has worked very well for us in terms of changing the brand metric to help us increase our market share, helping us to achieve a very strong commercial performance. It was all based on information about people coming out of lockdown who wanted to feel good again. “

This time around, the brand has learned to listen this Christmas and is building on the key idea that “people want to give it their all” this year to make up for the largely lost 2020 season. “We know people didn’t have a real Christmas last year. We couldn’t be with loved ones. We couldn’t kiss. We were unable to offer any gifts.

Boots makes it as easy as possible to “go all out” with more performance-based elements of the traditional Christmas campaign.

Laurent Simon, Creative Director at VMLY & R London, who worked on the campaign, said: “With so many people unable to spend the holidays with their loved ones last year, we wanted to sum up the sheer joy that people will feel this year as we recoup the lost time. Boots are a brand steeped in the fabric of British culture, and it was an exhilarating journey to bring their Christmas campaign to life with incredible flair behind us.

The campaign will see the three-minute film online and 60- and 30-second edits on TV and VOD. These premiered on TV on November 6 during Jonathan Ross on ITV.

There will be activations across TVC, online, radio, DOOH, print, PR, social and in-store. Where possible, Boots will use location targeting and personalization technology to drive people to their nearest stores.

The campaign is expected to reach over 18 million adults.

When it comes to supply chain slippages and potential risks for Christmas, including the lockdown, the retailer has put in place regular and rigorous meetings, Markey concludes. “We’re just taking a holistic look at emerging challenges and opportunities. We also have a hotline to our suppliers. We have a very tight set of processes in place. We are confident about our position today. I think we are ready for a very good Christmas.

Additional reporting by Hannah Bowler.


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