Retail giant John Lewis has revealed its 2014 Christmas advertising and marketing strategy, with a child and a penguin taking centre stage.

The integrated campaign, which will be heavily run on social networks as well as on TV and other media, has been put together at a cost of  £7m. Featuring a conservation bent to tap into the growing wave of green concern among its customers, it is on social media channels that the campaign made its first inroads.

The flagship event for the campaign is the TV advert, however, which follows the story of a young boy, Monty, his penguin friend, and Monty’s beau Mabel. It is set to a Tom Odell cover of the John Lennon hit ‘Real Love’.

The ad saw its first airing on Thursday night, about 24 hours after it was first released on Twitter with the hashtag #MontyThePenguin.

This helped to ensure that the launch was heavily covered in the national press on Thursday.

However, it is in gaining traction from the public that John Lewis will really want to see success, with a flurry of conversation across mediums hoped for. After the campaign, the John Lewis Partnership has said it will assess its impact.

The John Lewis YouTube channel will also play a big part in getting the message out there, with written, visual, and audio creative content set to play a bigger role than ever before this festive period in the retail arena.

It is a fully integrated campaign, which, although largely driven by content in earned media, will dovetail with numerous in-store initiatives.

The John Lewis flagship store in London will play host to ‘Monty’s Winter Garden’, with a further 40 plus locations having their own ‘Monty’s Den’ installations.

Other initiatives will include inviting customers, both children and adults, to bring their own favourite toys in-store to be animated through CGI, and a chance to join the WWF’s ‘Adopt a Penguin’ campaign.

Richard Bell

Richard has a First in English Literature and Creative Writing, and has experience writing fiction and short stories (which he has published both online and in magazines).