MARIAH CAREY CHRISTMAS AD LAUNCH
THE CHALLENGE
We were briefed by Walkers to tease and amplify the Walkers Christmas campaign and drive awareness of the Festive Flavours range in earned media. The challenge was to increase awareness and brand saliency during a competitive season while demonstrating that Walkers are too irresistible to share, even at Christmas.
PEOPLE-FIRST INSIGHT
The Walkers 2019 Christmas campaign was set to star Mariah Carey, on the 25th anniversary of her best-selling Christmas single, ‘All I Want for Christmas’. We knew having the Queen of Christmas herself would stir festive excitement, and allow us to land big.
THE STORY
A tabloid news leak that Walkers was working with Mariah back in August that year looked set to ruin our plans, but instead we turned it into an advantage. We purposefully remained silent, refusing all opportunities to comment, until the time came to kick start our campaign. Then, we ‘leveraged the leak’, confirming that the rumours were true and releasing a carefully chosen campaign image to achieve mass coverage. We then deployed disruptive tactics to continue the conversation – a social tease of the ad featuring Mariah herself, a sneak media preview, exclusive interviews with Mariah and disruptive media and influencer mailers designed to get us into the Christmas ad round-ups, which previously Walkers has not been a part of. The high-tech mailers were light activated, singing Mariah’s famously piercing high C note that featured in the ad to unwitting recipients, then triggering a screen that played the ad in full 12 hours before its TV air time.
Alongside this, we also issued a press release on the return of the Walkers crisps festive flavours, which although not NPD, would drive more awareness to the Walkers brand and Christmas advert.
HOW IT TRAVELLED
The campaign was successful in increasing awareness and talkability around the launch of the ad, with a total of 421 pieces of coverage generated for the campaign. We also secured an exclusive interview with Mariah Carey with Stylist magazine, which was also pushed out in its newsletter. The send out of the creative mailers were also successful in creating a buzz around the advert, with Piers Morgan even opening one up on live breakfast TV. This all resulted in the campaign having the highest earned media Share of Voice of all Christmas ads.
THE OUTCOME
The campaign was successful in increasing awareness and talkability around the launch of the ad, with a total of 421 pieces of coverage generated for the campaign. We also secured an exclusive interview with Mariah Carey with Stylist magazine, which was also pushed out in its newsletter. The send out of the creative mailers were also successful in creating a buzz around the advert, with Piers Morgan even opening one up on live breakfast TV. This all resulted in the campaign having the highest earned media Share of Voice of all Christmas ads.
421 pieces of coverage. 39 million reach on TV. 14.5 million views online. The 'high c' media mailer was opened by Piers Morgan on good morning Britain (much to his annoyance).