When Saatchi & Saatchi took the John Lewis account from Adam&EveDDB, many wondered if it would stick to the tried-and-tested formula or evolve it to tackle business challenges. System1’s Andrew Tindall shows how the the agency has done both. Every November, the marketing industry turns to System1 to understand what real people think of the biggest advertising event of the year – Christmas.
Which brands have created effective campaigns that make consumers feel something? Are there any flops? How has John Lewis done? Some even work with us in private to pre-test their ads to improve them (hint: it’s often the ones that go on to gobble up market share, like Aldi...
). Well, despite it being September, John Lewis has made the first move by releasing the first of a three-part campaign that will end in (hopefully) effective Christmas goodness. And we’ve already tested it with a representative group of the UK public .
You may have seen some opinions about the ad on LinkedIn or even read The Drum’s take on it. But I’m here to share what normal people feel, not marketers. Because how the intended audience of the ad feels predicts how the campaign will perform in the market.
The campaign is a massive winner. But there’s a lot more going on here that needs to be applauded. As you can see from the Test Your Ad sec-by-sec emotional trace below.
What’s brilliant here is the use of story, character and craft to take the viewer on a journey, importantly leaving you feeling intensely positive about John Lewis. Not only that, but the brand is inseparable from the creative idea. This mixture of brand centricity and intense emotions lands this campaign in the top few percent for predicted short-term effects and brand recall (what we call “fluency”).
“But what about the long, not just the short?” I hear all my Binet and Field lovers shouting. How good will it be at influencing future behavior for years to come? The key to ads that effectively drive long-term results is imbuing the brand with positive emotions. So, when the messages it lands and the brand itself come to mind in the future, it subconsciously feels like the right choice.
This campaign managed to score a “Good” 3.7-Stars. You might think this is just about okay, especially considering all the 5-star Christmas ads the brand used to put out five to ten years ago.
But it deserves more credit than that. I, too, was left deflated, but the wonderful Gen Norris, who manages System1’s global comms, slapped me out of it with data. If you look at the average ad effectiveness for the brand over the past four years, this is clearly one of the most effective ads they’ve put out in a very long time.
And do you know how they’ve done it? Creative consistency. System1 and the IPA have new research coming out in a few weeks that shows the more committed and brand is to their positioning and creative ideas, and the more consistent campaigns with each other (using the same assets, taglines, celebs, characters, soundtracks, etc) – the more large business effects they drive. Importantly, we found that the more brands change their creative agency, the less effective their advertising becomes.
But we know John Lewis just made the colossal move from Adam&EveDDB to Saatchi & Saatchi. How are they kicking out advertising gold so soon? ‘ Never Knowingly Undersold’ is back , albeit in an evolved state, digging into the brand’s extensive history to revive the brilliant tagline. They are leveraging creative consistency, exactly what any new agency needs to do on a brand.
Not starting again from scratch. We’ve also shown in the research that creatively inconsistent brands don’t improve their advertising over the years. But ads from the most consistent brands just get better and better.
Compound interest, building interest from consumers to generate more and more effects for the brand. So if Saatchi & Saatchi can hold this wheel, there’s 5-Star goodness waiting for it just around the corner. As long as it can also keep creating beautiful, right-brained, entertaining work like this.
If you’re in London on October 9, System1 is launching Compound Interest: The Power of Consistent Campaigns at the IPA . Be the first to see the insights. Read more from Andrew here and talk to him here on LinkedIn .
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