Newsworks Planning Awards

John Lewis Shop Spring Campaign – Best Newspaper Campaign

Executive Summary John Lewis needed to boost sales in April 2013 because of tough sales targets set from a strong April 2012. John Lewis decided to run a daily unique promotion within store but needed a media vehicle to promote it. Newsbrands were the perfect media to do this with. In particular The Metro performed exceptionally well allowing us to tap into their readership throughout the day through their multi platforms. The Times also gave us the opportunity to highly target the audience on the weekend through their print and tablet platforms. The results were fantastic; sales exceeded their projected forecast uplift in sales by 83%. Background and objectives John Lewis’ sales in April 2012 were really strong due to Easter falling in this month and the iPad 3 launch. Therefore John Lewis’ YoY sales targets were very tough for April 2013. Easter fell at the end of March this year so they needed to find something to get behind and push sales for the month. John Lewis only run discounting sales during Summer & Winter Clearance so we couldn’t have a traditional price cutting event like all other retailers. They needed to give people an excuse to come into John Lewis to drive footfall and sales. John Lewis wanted to run a daily promotion campaign, each day there would be an extra-ordinary offer on a certain product in store. The offers would vary each day in price, promotion and the category. John Lewis only had a limited budget for the campaign, therefore this omitted using their usual default media for announcement; TV.

Insight and strategy We needed to utilise a channel which was habitual and still drove large numbers. National press was the perfect vehicle to communicate the daily offer on a daily basis across a variety of touch points. Frequency was key for this campaign, we needed to provide readers with daily reminders on why they should go into the John Lewis stores. However, it was also imperative that we used newbrands which had a large reach. To ensure the budget was maximised as much as possible we partnered with two key newsbrands which performed exceptionally well against the target audience. We needed a primary partner title which was habitual read and delivered numbers, Metro was the perfect partner with its high circulating yet accessible readership. Against the target audience ABC1 25-54yrs Metro indexed at 150 and with a high coverage of 10.5% (TGI 2013 Q3). It was the perfect title for the campaign due to its scale, multiple touchpoints and habitual urbanite readership. However it does not publish the print publication on the weekend, therefore we needed to use another newsbrand to continue to communicate the message over the weekend. The Times and Sunday Times was a great match for the weekend reader, more of a relaxed read when the reader is thinking about what to do for the weekend ahead. Saturday also has a 33% higher circulation in the Times compared to the rest of the week whilst remaining at the same rate making it more cost effective. Again against the audience they performed very well (Index 137 with a coverage of 3.5% for the daily and the Sunday Indexed at 148 and 7.4% coverage).

Touchpoints data also indicated that the ABC1 25-54 audience were high tablet (Index 145) and newsbrand website (Index 150). In particular Metro.co.uk was one of the highest performing news websites that this audience engaged with. Therefore, to extend the reach of the campaign further and to ensure we were engaging with the readers across the whole day we utilised the Metro and Times’ multi platforms The plan To draw attention to the promotion we needed to kick off with a big bang, a coverwrap was a perfect execution to do this; they are highly impactful and ensure the message is at the forefront of peoples mind. The coverwrap acted as an advent calendar detailing the daily promotion and showcasing the up coming daily promotions. We continued with various engaging formats which consisted of IFC DPS, chequerboards and half page DPS formats within the newspaper on key days of the promotion (Monday and Friday). Plus tactical half pages on the days in between to ensure we achieved the high frequency required. This was also taken to the Metro’s website, tablet and mobile editions. Utilising all of Metro’s platforms ensured that we were tapping into the audience throughout the day, not just the morning. Metro.co.uk sees its highest peak of traffic at lunchtime, therefore we guaranteed 25% SOV between 12noon-2pm. We ran a combination of formats on the website to provide a dominance of the site, these were a dynamic MPU and an expandable leaderboard. Traffic on the tablet and mobile app peaks in the mornings and evenings, the interstitial adverts provided a high level of interactivity. John Lewis was the first advertiser also the first to sponsor the Metro slider puzzle (which ran on tablet and website), this encouraged interaction and readers were highly engaged with the daily John Lewis promotion. The weekend activity launched with an impressive DPS in the Sunday Times which was impossible to miss. The proceeding weekends consisted of half pages again to drive frequency, these all ran 1st/2nd of format to ensure the message was at the forefront of peoples mind. Again this activity was mirrored in the tablet editions ensuring that we were maximising the reach to the Times audience. See the appendix below for full detailed plan plus images of the activity. Results By consolidating the spend to two newsbrands resulted in considerable value for the campaign, overall we generated 28% value, making the campaign feel even bigger. This campaign ran soley within newsbrands therefore, we know that the uplift in sales was attributed to the newsbrands activity. The Metro newspaper and digital activity highly complemented each other, especially when the impactful formats ran in national press we saw a 250% increase in the click through rates on the website. The overall Metro website results were fantastic, the rich media expansion rate delivery was 15% which is 499% higher than the benchmark, dwell time was 48 seconds compared to a benchmark of 43 seconds. Furthermore, the Metro iPad activity had a high CTR of 1.7% (against a benchmark of 1%), the mobile activity came in at 0.7% CTR (against a benchmark of 0.3%). The slider game was also a great hit with the readers, nearly 13k readers engaged and played with the game.

Despite the Times activity only running on the weekends the Tablet activity drove 515k impressions, which confirmed that by adding the tablet activity really did extend the reach. The sales of the products featured in the promotions fully exceeding John Lewis’ forecasted uplift in sales by 83%. Client view Lloyd Page, head of own-brand marketing at John Lewis, said: “This is a major new initiative for John Lewis. More than a promotion, it’s designed to maintain momentum and keep customers coming back to John Lewis over the course of an entire month. We had multiple objectives at the start of the project, from driving footfall into stores, to driving awareness of our cross category offer. The premium look and feel of the creative, plus the media approach helped us do this is an innovative way”

Appendix:

The laydown plan:

Thurs 28th March

Metro – IFC DPS

Sunday 31st March

Sunday Times – DPS Tuesday 2nd April Metro – Coverwrap & Half Page

Bank Holiday Monday 1st

April Times – Half Page

Monday & Friday

Metro - Checkerboard

Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday

Metro – Half Page

Saturday & Sunday

Times & Sunday Times – Half Page

Expendable leaderboard and MPU: Monday-Sunday

Metro Tablet Activity Times Tablet Activity