The Christmas Ad Battle 2014

The Christmas Retail Battle has been a closely fought contest with John Lewis crowned winner and Iceland coming rock bottom in 2014. In our final report, we look back at our Brand Agility Index scoring and understand what John Lewis did differently to other retailers to come top of the battle.

Over the past 5 weeks, we’ve been monitoring the top 10 retailers to see how they fare against each other when trying to win the number one spot for the most memorable Christmas campaign. Through our Brand Agility Index, we’ve learned that having high levels of customer engagement, pushed the likes of John Lewis, Marks and Spencer’s and Sainsbury’s to the top of the league table. Not only did these retailers nail the big idea, but through having a quick response rate, customers were able to engage directly with the brand at a time when sales were high. We also found that having fictional characters like John Lewis’ Monty and Mable – helps customers emotionally connect with the brand and when customers have connected emotionally, they want to share their views through multiple channels such as Twitter and Facebook, helping these retailers to score high. 

The top 5 learnings we can take from this virtual battle are:

• Winners engage quickly and often
• Leaders evolve their strategy
• Everyone struggles with multi-platform cohesion
• The power of the fictional character
• Imitation is the highest form of flattery

To read the full report, click HERE. To read Marketing Week’s roundup, click HERE.

The final Brand Agility Index scoring results are: