53% of UK working parents say they find it difficult to spend enough time with family and spending time with family at Christmas becomes even more important.

Despite having executed our past three Christmas campaigns around ‘Christmas is for Sharing’, our research revealed that, rather than getting ‘tired’, it was a more meaningful proposition to a families than ever.

So, for Christmas 2016, our comms strategy would ground itself in that insight…

…At Christmas, your TIME is the greatest gift you can share with those you love.

Creatively spearheading the campaign was a 3½ min stop-motion animation film called ‘The Greatest Gift’.

Through the lyrics of a specially written song, the film told the story of a Dad called Dave who is struggling to balance his work life with sharing quality time with his family in the run-up to Christmas – until he finds an ingenious, uplifting solution to his problem.

On the morning of November 14th, we launched The Greatest Gift on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, with a primetime TV premiere following later that evening.

Four days later, we integrated food-specific ads into the campaign with an ad-break featuring a mini episode of popular TV show Gogglebox

This episode featured some of the most famous families on British TV watching, and talking about, The Greatest Gift before being magically transformed into stop-motion characters to become part of Sainsbury’s animated world.

Further media executions designed to help families share more time together in the run up to Christmas included;

• selling Stop Motion animation kits in-store so families could make their own films at home

• distributing family recipe inspiration on social media

• encouraging families to upload their own version of ‘The Greatest Gift’ song online

• and a karaoke version of the ad so families could sing along at home on Christmas Eve

BRAND RESULTS:

Our objective of making Sainsbury’s food famous worked, with post-Christmas brand tracking showing the following;

• ‘Sainsbury’s has a great range of products this Christmas’ +57% YOY

• ‘Sainsbury’s has everything you need for Christmas’ +73% YOY

• ‘Makes me want to shop at Sainsbury’s’ +40% YOY

COMMERCIAL RESULTS:

• Sainsbury’s raised more than £500,000 for Great Ormond Street Hospital

• delivering record-breaking Christmas transactions

• And the highest market share growth of ANY UK supermarket.

• Christmas trading results that were so good, Sainsbury’s share price increased 6% when they were announced in January