Marks & Spencer (does anyone still call it that, even the company?) is betting Christmas on a tie-up with the new Paddington 2 film – not a very imaginative name but it seems we have a new franchise on the way.
So we have ‘Paddington & The Christmas Visitor’ from Grey, a film trailer in essence, featuring not last year’s Mrs Claus from Y&R but Mr Claus, who looks rather like pugnacious England prop forward Joe Marler.
Mrs Claus increased M&S’ Christmas sales for the first time in years, how will Mr Claus and Paddington perform in what the company claims is its most “digitised, personalised” campaign to date? Meaning that it leads on social media.
M&S is offering Paddington bits and bobs – including a duffel coat for £42, gulp – and donating profits from the £3 book to the NSPCC – straight out of the John Lewis and Sainsbury’s (Mog the cat) song book. Both of these are expected on Thursday.
The ad? A box ticking exercise in reality, given the importance of the Paddington tie-up for M&S.
But capably handled and already proving popular, 68,000 YouTube views already.
MAA creative scale: 7.
