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How Tesco’s Festive Ad Campaign Delivered Success For Retailer

Tesco hailed the success of its Christmas ad campaign following a successful festive period for the UK’s largest supermarket chain.

The retailer saw its sales grow for the fifth Christmas in a row, selling more food in one day than any other time in its history.

And Chief Executive Dave Lewis was quick to point to the success of its festive marketing campaign — “Delivering Christmas” — as a key contributing factor.

Lewis said: “We’re really very happy with the way the campaign worked. We were very clear about putting customers at the centre and rewarding them with even better value. People have really enjoyed the ad campaign – it’s a bit of fun, it’s humorous, quite empathetic and engaging.”

Tesco’s Christmas ad campaign followed a delivery driver travelling through time in a Tesco Delivery van in a nod to cult film Back To The Future to celebrate their 100th anniversary.

But what made it so successful? Well, during the festive period we analysed 25 UK Christmas spots using our content testing tool UnrulyEQ.

The ad ranked third for effectiveness ranking above the UK norm for purchase intent (+56%), find out more (+16%) and brand favourability (+6%).

It also packs an emotional punch, finishing joint fifth in our list of the most emotionally-engaging festive ads. Viewers’ levels of happiness (22% vs. the UK norm of 7%) and warmth (18% vs. 6%) were particularly high.

So why is this important? Well, from our data, we know that associating positive emotions like Happiness and Warmth with your brand is key in long-term brand building.

If Tesco can continue to do this through their advertising they may just see the success they saw over the festive period continue well into 2020.

Find out more about Unruly EQ.