Beyond Toys: Making Argos Matter

With more than 50 years of history as an iconic high street shop with a cherished catalogue, Argos has evolved into a leading digital retailer with around 80 per cent of consumer transactions starting online, becoming a beloved household name across generations. 

Argos currently has 20 million active customers and saw recognition this year as the first winner of the Digital Capability Index, a new ranking created by Retail Week and The Grocer. The brand has built a strong level of trust with its consumers by offering what matters most to them in their shopping experience.

As Christmas is just around the corner, the retailer’s biggest challenge is building on the established love and knowledge of its audience and bringing relevance to the modern day consumer. In turn, head of brand comms, Laura Boothby, wants to showcase the expansion of the brand, whilst tapping into all the reasons why customers love Argos.

The path to marketing

Having studied psychology at the University of Nottingham, Boothby has always had an interest in human behaviour, yet she has a strong creative side, meaning that marketing was always something she was interested in, bringing together science and creativity.

The beginning of her career was in a temporary role at Sainsbury’s head office in a retail labour team, before following her passion and finding her way into more of a marketing role. From Nectar brand manager to joining the campaign team to moving around into proposition and strategy, Boothby finally headed to the advertising team at Sainsbury’s. From there, the next move was to Argos and Habitat, in a wide-ranging marketing role, covering brand governance, in-store marketing, and the brands gift guide.

After almost 20 years in the business, Boothby expresses that retail is so fast-paced and never boring. She says “There’s always a different challenge and I thrive in that chaos.” Over her long career, Boothby’s approach has become more about taking risks and being brave in decision making to keep up with the fast pace of the industry and the culture of being on trend.

Not Just Toys

With social media users always reminiscing on what Argos used to be and creators enjoying the return of its catalogue, Boothby feels that element is something to embrace, however she also says the brand doesn’t want to be stuck in the past.

Playing with what arguably people know best about Argos, its toy range, the brand decided to embrace and respond to customers to communicate Argos is more than that.

That insight led to Connie and Trevor being the stars of the Not Just Toys campaign, created by T&P. The toys themselves became the face of the challenge, playing dramatic roles, such as mafia bosses or interrogators, while challenging people with their misconceptions. Boothby says that on paper, some of those roles could feel quite menacing, but because they're toys, that tension makes it funny.

Working with T&P, Boothby says “It was starting from this insight and thinking “lets embrace the misconception’ but do that in an engaging and humorous way that gets cut through.” She says the mascots act as really distinctive assets for the brand. “You see them and you know it’s Argos”. 

Boothby says the brand is continuously thinking about where this concept can go next. “We’ve got a really good brand platform and a core idea that we’re able to adapt. The biggest challenge is how we keep bettering ourselves.”

An Argos Christmas Carol

Argos’s mascots are back again this Christmas season, with a Charles Dickens-inspired story, bringing a tale of presents of the past and of the modern day, showcasing the wide range of products. With nostalgic memories of circling presents in the catalogues brought to life, Argos brings the same feeling of joy to the present day, all to help comedian Richard Ayoade find the perfect present for his family for Christmas.

She explains, “Very early on, we were shown the out-of-home idea with someone having an old Mr Frosty versus one of the new modern Ninja Slushies. We saw the idea of Christmas past and Christmas present and thought, ‘That’s genius! How has no one done that before?’”

Boothby says the starting point to the campaign film was how to turn a new interrogation technique, from Connie and Trevor, into something festive. She adds that the love for nostalgia, especially during the Christmas period, was something to build upon, and the idea for a Dickensian Scrooge concept, bringing the past and present together, came together quite quickly.

As a British brand, Boothby says that working with British comedians brings a real sense of British humour, being plugged-in and playful whilst bringing the added bit of fame for the brand. “On the shoot itself, Ayoade was adding lines and ad-libbing, making things funnier and funnier. Having Ayoade as part of the campaign, being both invested in the script and understanding his character, brought along his genuine comedic talent to tie the story together,” Boothby claims.

Another element of the brand is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. “We’re not here to make people cry. We want to make them laugh and entertain them.” The There's More to Argos platform is able to bring the narrative concept to life, with the help of both Connie and Trevor to bring the humour and to challenge the misconceptions.

The world of marketing according to Laura Boothby

What do you enjoy most about the industry and being a marketer?

I love brands, but I want to work on brands that people down the pub can talk about and know and Argos and Sainsbury’s, where I previously worked, are brands everyone knows and that have really rich heritage. I think the amount of work we can create and the pace at which we can create it are really important to me, and retail will just give you that. Just the amount of campaigns my team works on and makes means it’s always interesting.

For me, the other exciting thing is also the calibre and diversity of the people you get to work with. You work with amazing creatives and directors who are the best in their field. You also work with incredibly talented econometricians and data scientists and just the talent and the people you get to interact with are so interesting to me. I feel very privileged to be in a position where I get to work with all of those people.

Again, it comes back to both the art and the science. In marketing, you get to interact with lots of really smart brains who are the best in their fields.

And on the flip side of that, what do you find to be the most frustrating thing about the industry?

Maybe not a frustration, but definitely a challenge: the scale of change and keeping up with it. Every day there’s a new media platform, a new innovation on social media, and even with AI everything is changing so rapidly.

Being able to keep up with that and balance where you spend your media budget, what you invest in and how you achieve cut-through is difficult. There are more advertisers than ever and more fragmentation. I think I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s frustrating, because it’s interesting as well, but that’s definitely the biggest challenge for me.

What makes a great agency partner?

So there's something for me about finding the sweet spot of healthy tension. Because I really believe that excellent work comes from tension. I don’t want to work with an agency that agrees with me all the time. That isn’t right. But I also don’t want to work with someone who is going to argue with me 25 times a day about the size of the logo. It’s about finding that sweet spot where you have a relationship in which you can debate the right things but also let things go when you need to.

I think we have that with T&P and part of that is built on having an excellent personal relationship with them. They’re part of the team. I hang out with them more than I hang out with my own family - I see them so much! We’ll often have our status calls and the first 10 minutes are spent chatting about what we saw on TV or the latest celebrity gossip or whatever it might be.

I think that stuff is really important because you spend so much time with these people and the relationship you build means you can have those healthy tension conversations because you know it’s all coming from a good place and I think that is really key to it. There’s also the shared ambition. Everyone is really passionate about the brand, and everyone wants to make amazing work and I think that is absolutely core to it as well.

Across your career, what would you say is your proudest piece of work?

This might sound like a bit of a cop-out answer, but it is true: I genuinely believe the last piece of work you worked on should be your proudest piece of work, because I’m always thinking the next thing has to be better and better. So I’ll say this Christmas campaign is one of my proudest pieces of work. I think even last Christmas was excellent and performed really well and we set ourselves the ambition that we had to better it, which was no mean feat, and I think we’ve done that.

And what would you say is a campaign that you personally didn't work on, but really wish you did?

There was a KitKat campaign last year, when a truckload of KitKats went missing. It was such a strange campaign because it came from a genuine event that could have become a negative PR crisis for KitKat. Instead, they decided to really dine out on it and they got so much virality from it. People made TikTok videos and became really invested in the investigation. They also did some really fun stunts. I think they drove a KitKat lorry through Times Square with armed guards.

Just the speed at which they reacted was amazing. I don’t know how they managed to get a website set up so quickly after it happened. Something that could have been negative was turned into something amazingly positive. They sold a lot of KitKats off the back of it, but the love and engagement it generated from customers were amazing. I would have loved to have worked on that.

If marketing didn't exist, what do you think you would find yourself doing?

Going back to my interest in human behaviour, one of the things I love is true crime. I think maybe in another life, I might be a forensic investigator. The kind of person who looks at where the hammer was left, works out what happened and reconstructs a crime scene to figure out who did it. I don’t know if it would be creative enough for me, though. Maybe I’d be an artist in the evenings and a forensic investigator in my day job.