ABOUT

Background and Brief:
For the UK’s retail marketers, there’s nothing more high-stakes than Christmas. And historically, there’s only one way to win it: with a big, glossy, tear-jerking TV ad (and a huge media budget to boot). But with everyone in the same boat, getting cut-through is a challenge. So when Sainsbury’s asked us to help drive brand fame and love on social channels this Christmas, it was time to create something really worth talking about.

Our mandate was to drive fame and warmth in support of Sainsbury’s Christmas campaign proposition: “We give all we’ve got for the ones we love”. We spotted an opportunity in the town of Bude, Cornwall, where a plastic Sainsbury’s tunnel was racking up ratings as a local attraction on TripAdvisor. Silly, good-hearted, and quintessentially British, the story had all the makings of an internet phenomenon. And we saw potential for Sainsbury’s to take it there.

Idea:
The idea was simple. Building on the growing TripAdvisor community’s love for the Bude Tunnel, Sainsbury’s would give the walkway a spectacular light makeover, bringing Christmas cheer to shoppers and giving the wider internet something to smile about. The experience would complement Sainsbury’s above the line Christmas campaign, which sang the virtues of “giving all we’ve got for the ones we love”. The Bude Tunnel would make manifest this message of effort, craft and going the extra mile.

And delivering on craft was key. With high stakes set by the original TripAdvisor fanbase, this tunnel had to be an undisputed knockout, Britain’s most magical Christmas light display. Also critical was the scale of messaging. This was a small community joke, and we were responding in kind. The campaign would be fronted by relevant community members - store workers, tunnel fans and charity partners - who could tell the story best.

Strategy:
You know it’s a unique Christmas campaign when Boaty McBoatface becomes your amplification role model. But meme phenomena like Boaty really were templates for our media approach. We wanted to build on an existing cultural property, give it even greater currency and memetic power. Our ambition was for people to wear the internet joke like a badge of honour, a sign of their own currency. That required careful staging. First mobilising the local community, news desks and influencers to make social and media noise. Then building natural allies in the strongholds of weird Internet culture: Reddit, Twitter and our first fans, TripAdvisor. Next up, we approached online communities with a natural interest in the tunnel: tourism blogs, architecture groups, street art enthusiasts, Christmas megafans. Surrounding our ripple-out approach was a guaranteed “hard shell” of reach: a social seeding network partnership to deliver 2 million views of documentary style video content.

Execution:
A covert overnight operation revealed the new tunnel just in time for Bude’s big Christmas shopping weekend. Key community members fronted the reveal: Steve, the store manager, shot a lo-fi selfie film to share on his own channels. Our ambition was for the display to organically generate social noise over the weekend, fuelled by the tunnel’s own characterful perspectives on @BudeTunnel channels.
Our community-centred amplification approach paid off: local businesses, content creators and publishers were quick to build on the legend of the tunnel. Our media channels became fan t-shirts, cakes and naff knitted jumpers. We provided fodder for letterbox memes and culture mashups, gifs and selfies. All the while, Sainsbury’s stayed quiet, only making a splash a week later with a gentle wrap-up video. And it worked: with Sainsbury’s in the background, the stunt kept an authentic grassroots feel and honoured the humour of the original TripAdvisor story. .

Results:
Riffing off a grassroots social trend is no mean feat. Like a parent trying to be down with the kids, the input of the corporate brand is fraught. But the Bude Tunnel proved the power of getting it right. Share of voice for Sainsbury’s skyrocketed 276%, and the tunnel became the #1 trend on Twitter, covered across national papers (>100 press mentions), and most watched on the BBC. The tunnel’s ardent fanbase and strange mimetic power - its roster of tribute cakes, merch and gifs - drew international attention, even trending on Fox News.

On the ground, crowds set cash tills ringing, with 26% incremental sales uplift. But the real success was the unilaterally (>99%) positive feedback: hundreds even petitioned for a extension. With the Bude Tunnel, an almost silent brand managed to mobilise an intricate network of internet subcultures to tip a niche local story into international fame.