The new 2012 John Lewis Christmas TV advert celebrated the extra mile we all go to at Christmas to find the perfect gift. 

Called 'The Journey', it opens in a family's snow-covered garden, with children making a snowman and snowoman. When the snowman has mysteriously disappeared the next morning, the audience is transported to a magical world, following the determined snowman on an epic journey across river, mountain, road and city. The motive for the snowman's journey isn't revealed until the last scene, when we see him return on Christmas morning. 

The ad is set to a cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Power of Love' sung by Gabrielle Aplin.

Straight after the ad launch we brought our snowman alive through as many different channels as possible, including instore, online and experiential.

In November our TV campaign aired, starting with teasers on channel 4.

The snowman popped up throughout our stores, on our bags, in our window displays, we also created a knit your own snowman kit.

We organised a real life snowman hunt for children in every store during a key sales weekend.

A children’s book of the story was published and made available instore and online.

The snowman then made unexpected visits all over the country, with prompts to tweet #snowmanjourney…creating a buzz online.

A Facebook app competition was also created where people could guess the location of the snowman and win prizes every day.

We also registered the track with Shazam to prompt downloads, the song reached number 1 on the iTunes chart 3rd December, and topped the UK Official Chart on 9th December 2012.

The ad trended on Twitter 45 minutes after launching.

In the first week it amassed over 1 million views on YouTube,

reaching 3 million hits by Christmas.

44% increased sales online, 14.8% increased festive sales overall on previous year while the campaign was live.

Sales in the week leading up to Boxing Day exceeding £150million for the first time, a 26.5% increase on the same week in 2011.

Marks & Spencer, John Lewis’s main competitor, saw non-

food sales decline by -3% during the same period.


Andy Street, the MD of John Lewis hailed Christmas 2012.

as the ‘best in its history’ (The Guardian, 26th December 2012).


The campaign itself was voted UK 2012's favourite Christmas advert by Netmums. 


Over 22,500 copies of the soundtrack were sold in John Lewis leading to £20,000 being donated to Save The Children from the profits on sales.