Behind Sainsbury's Big Christmas Campaign Success Story

Sainsbury’s is celebrating its biggest Christmas ever with a growth in sales over the crucial six-week shopping period of 3.8 per cent, achieved with just a little help from a Big Friendly Giant (The BFG).

It's a hugely positive moment for everyone connected to the supermarket following several tough years of consumers feeling the pinch after the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis that has felt ever present.

According to Kantar Marketplace's data report on the supermarket's performance, Sainsbury's also achieved its largest market share during Christmas since 2019 after "strengthening perceptions on key dimensions that are most closely related to building penetration as the gains up to August this year demonstrate".

“The strength of our customer service and operational performance stood us apart in delivering our biggest-ever Christmas. Customers shopped later than ever and we achieved our highest-ever sales in the final days before Christmas,” explained Simon Roberts, chief executive of J Sainsbury plc, as he lauded the performance while announcing a five per cent pay rise for hourly colleagues.

To amplify its festive ‘Taste the Different’ range Sainsbury's marketing team, led by Radha Davies, marketing director, Brands, Planning and Creative, working alongside agency New Commercial Arts (NCA), went big and - significantly - they went early for this Christmas campaign.

They also chose to centre it around one of well-loved author Roald Dahl’s most beloved characters – The BFG.

Building on the brand platform

The last festive campaign faced a quick turnaround following a late pitch that saw NCA named as its creative agency in April 2023. That winning idea introduced the new platform ‘Good Food for All of Us’, which has been ever present since.

Due to that experience, there was a conscious decision that more time would be dedicated to the development of the 2024 Christmas work and, alongside the platform, it would also continue featuring Sainsbury’s colleagues, albeit this time without the legendary Rick Astley.  

“We've learned that starting early allows you to really optimise and come up with the best work and really dedicate the time that you need to achieve the craft in the work, and I think having a strong partner has really enabled that,” admits Davies. She also states that after building trust in the agency Sainsbury's could trust gut feeling around the ideas that would come back.

“You have to be an instinctive marketer to think about: has it got that feeling, the excitement: and is it going to excite our customers: and is it going to excite the whole organisation? Can it be that amazing idea that galvanizes an entire business to want to do its best? And for us, it ticked all of those boxes," she adds.

During that ideas pitch, however, the marketing team also realised that they wanted the Christmas campaign to be more consistent with the activity for the rest of the year, underpinned by its singular brand platform while also featuring real staff members.

“The idea that we have is very much about using our colleagues as the face and the voice of Sainsbury's to show how much we care and the attention we put into the food that we deliver and land ‘good food for all of us'," outlines Davies.

Beginning to plan almost immediately after the release of the previous Christmas campaign, the Sainsbury's team knew that for 2024 they wanted to go bigger while weaving in some magic and wonder into the narrative alongside the core creative platform.

As is the practice within NCA, everyone within the agency was given the opportunity to have a crack at the brief, producing a shortlist of three ideas, one of which featured Dahl's The BFG suggested by Ian Heartfield, CCO of the agency.

“The moment we heard it, it chimed,” states James Murphy, co-founder of NCA and now chief executive of Ogilvy UK. “Having worked with Sainsbury's for quite a few months then and really having got to know the character of the organisation, and I would dare say the character of Simon Roberts, the idea of the big friendly grocer chimed… we just knew that that would be excellent.”

The ad sees the 24-foot giant ask a Sainsbury’s colleague (not originally named Sophie until The Roald Dahl Story Company insisted that she should be): “Hey Sainsbury’s, how can we make this Christmas a bit more… phizz-whizzing?”. This would then see the pair take a UK-wide journey in search of great-tasting food, sourcing fresh produce from Sainsbury’s trusted suppliers—including salmon, Brussels sprouts, and crumbly Stilton cheese.

Murphy compares the journey to that of Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman as they source the food that would be supplied to dinner tables around the British Isles over Christmas. Also weaved into the narrative was the supermarket’s partnership with Comic Relief, with five million meals being donated to families experiencing food poverty generated by the sale of mince pies.

“It allowed us to show what we were trying to do with Comic Relief, and it showed how our customers feel when they bring our food home to theirs. And that was a brilliant, magical moment as well that we were delighted with,” adds Davies.

The BFG impact

The Roald Dahl Story Company were heavily involved in the campaign that featured one of the author’s most popular characters to make sure he was realised consistently with the novel. That included details from his cave dwelling, his interactions with the families he visits and even his height and how big his footprints would be.

Featuring the BFG character generated a lot of intergenerational excitement among the team internally, however it was necessary to try and keep his appearance a secret until the campaign’s release in November.

“When people saw it, it was the same response as we got from our customers, which was absolute delight with a heavy dose of nostalgia,” says Davies who sees The BFG as a family-wide loved character through the movies and bedtime reading from parent to child over several decades.

And to underline the ‘Good Food for all of Us’ platform, the tone of the campaign was developed to generate warmth, helpfulness and accessibility to highlight Sainsbury’s brand DNA, Davies adds, aided by featuring one of its colleagues within the story as well.

Contributing to a record Christmas

The campaign itself would prove a major success in terms of measurement with System1 giving it a perfect score of 5.9 stars, the first time the brand has achieved the mark from the effectiveness platform.

“The result is a Christmas ad which feels as special as the food, and works as a strongly branded commercial that’s also a lovely tribute to a British children’s classic,” stated the campaign’s report from System1.

And Kantar Marketplace also found that the use of the BFG and especially the integration of the Sainsbury's colleague Sophie, helped to elicit a magical response among audiences.

"Tapping into nostalgia has worked well for the brand. A challenge when doing this can be that the cultural property that you’re tapping into takes over and the brand gets left behind. Although not quite as strong as last year’s ad, BFG still performed well in terms of branding (top 21 per cent) largely thanks to the integration of employee Sophie and the store setting at points. As people’s response to the ad in their own words demonstrates this isn’t just about the BFG either, the sense of Christmas magic that the ad conveyed also resonated powerfully with the audience," claims the report.

Internal metrics of success, Davies revealed, included tracking brand warmth and brand affinity to build the idea with customers that Sainsbury’s is the supermarket consumers are drawn to shop with. This makes the annual Christmas campaign, when more consumers pay attention to advertising than at any other point of the year, as a vital moment for the brand to communicate its core messages.

“Having a cumulative campaign that you don't break out of your strategy for Christmas, you build on all of the years preceding spend,” explains Murphy of the intention to be more consistent all year round.

And now, having reached the end of Simon Robert’s three-year strategy for the business to re-energise Sainsbury’s food business and re-set consumers’ value expectations, a new strategy has begun to drive growth.

Davies also reveals that within the brief, there was a challenge to the agency to produce something that would stop people talking about a former creative Christmas highlight ‘1914’ which is now a decade old.

“I think we absolutely delivered on that,” she says while also lauding the work of the agency behind it as well. “NCA smashed it out of the park.”