Marks & Spencer has ditched celebrities in favour of the power of social media for its Christmas advert this year - aiming to lift festive spirits with some “random acts of kindness”.
Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne, Marks & Spencer’s executive director of marketing and international, said the retailer was spending the same amount of cash on its 2014 Christmas marketing campaign as it spent last year, when it hired models David Gandy and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and actor Helena Bonham Carter. But this year much of the money has been switched to promotional activity on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
“This Christmas will be the biggest online Christmas ever in the UK and the most social Christmas, fuelled by an unprecedented surge in the use of mobile phones and tablet computers,” said Bousquet-Chavanne.
The ad launched on social media on Friday and will have its first TV screening during ITV’s X-Factor on Saturday night. It features two fairies, Magic and Sparkle, who turn a line of greying washing to glittery party outfits and switch a boring alarm clock present for a glamorous bra.
But M&S has been busy generating chatter on social media over the past week with small unbranded events such as creating real snow outside a primary school in Cornwall, giving gifts to night shift workers and creating fairies made of lights above Newcastle’s Tyne Bridge. They have been linked to the Twitter hashtag #followthefairies and @thetwofairies rather than the brand itself.
M&S’s increased use of social media echoes John Lewis and Debenhams both of which have encouraged an element of interaction via Twitter and Facebook in their Christmas campaigns.
M&S has been busy generating chatter on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr over the past week ahead of TV ad featuring two fairies dispensing random acts of kindness in the snow
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