There is no other brand like Boots, but in the most important and competitive sales period of the year, and after 18 months of Covid lockdowns and restrictions, the market context was challenging. Boots weren’t going to win by following the strongly established Christmas campaign conventions set by others.

So, we set out to write our own rules for Christmas, focusing on Boots’ unique strengths, combined with powerful consumer insights and a highly personalised approach.

Given the pandemic’s catastrophic effect on Christmas 2020, seeing celebrations ‘cancelled’ in the UK, the challenge for Christmas 2021 was immense. The business needed a 10% increase in value sales YOY with a 20% increase on average transaction value. Our core objective was to win back lapsed shoppers, maximise value from our loyal customers and deliver a revenue target of £686m incremental sales.

We created a metaphor for Boots that permeated the entire Christmas season – the magical Boots ‘Bag of Joy’, your ‘must have’ accessory for everything Christmas.

In our hero film, our main character Joy uses a magical bottomless bag to make the most of the Christmas season. Whether it’s for herself of others, she brings joy by pulling the perfect item out of the Boots bag at every opportunity.

Sometimes surprising, others touching, but always uplifting and wonderfully fitting to the situation and its recipient.

We then carried the Boots’ Bag of Joy concept across all of our touchpoints, using it as a vehicle that enabled us to dramatise that not only do we have gifts for every occasion, but they are fresh, modern and truly surprising.

The holistic experience proved that Boots has the breadth and depth to cater for everyone this Christmas.

Commercial success meant trading customers up to buying their main gifts from Boots, adding more things to their baskets and buying from us on multiple occasions over the period. We needed to attract new people to Boots and bring lapsed customers back into the fold.

Our strategy was to celebrate the Christmas Season, not just Christmas Day, by bringing joy to every corner of life with the added ability to tailor things to your personal needs. This gave Boots a distinctive role to play in people’s lives in a relevant and engaging way to squeeze as much out of Christmas as possible.

We leveraged a wealth of first-party data (14m loyalty card customers) and a host of media and technology partners to deliver 145m personalised connections across broadcast TV, VOD, DOOH, Display and Social.

We powered every channel with data to deliver a campaign which balanced mass-marketing with smart targeting.

A 60” TVC spot launched alongside a YouTube Masthead running our 3min film.

We see our protagonist Joy as she receives a special gift from her nan, a Boots’ bag that she discovers wields the power to make her Christmas truly magical - delivering the perfect gift at every opportunity when she reaches into it.

We utilised Liveramp and Adobe technology to leverage Boots first-party data, to personalise the film & creative messaging based on customer lifecycle stage and propensity to buy across TV, VOD, DOOH, Display and Social.

Google’s dynamic video product ‘Director Mix’ enabled us to dynamically create 100+ individual video versions, personalised to relevant audiences.

Our most personalised DOOH campaign ever using data-driven dynamic creative to direct people to their nearest Boots store, and we ran a shoppable TV ad partnering with Sky featuring a QR code enabling customers to ‘shop the ad’.

- YOY sales increased by 15%

- 45% of customers who shopped our Christmas categories this year hadn’t shopped Boots Christmas gifting in 2021

- Branded search volumes up 46%, site traffic to Boots.com +25% and seasonal gift traffic up 200%!

- Brand buzz +9.2% vs the pre-pandemic Christmas of 2019

- 3.2m completed views of 3 min Christmas film across YouTube and of the top YouTube Christmas Ads, Boots beat John Lewis, Amazon, Argos and Very on favourability at 86%.

- Through innovative use of data, we delivered 145m ‘joyful personalised connections’ making Boots more relevant to consumers

- Across Sky Shoppable TV, we delivered +52% QR scans vs benchmark

- ROAS: Display – +157% vs target, Paid Social - +45% vs target, PPC - +44% vs target

- Boots became the only brand in the top 5 to be shopped both in-store and online for Christmas across competitors