2014 started with the TV concept, ‘Monty the Penguin’. Over the last few years, John Lewis has made a name for itself with its emotional approach to Christmas marketing. Many saw the arrival of the latest ‘John Lewis ad’ as the start of the festive season. With this natural excitement around their advertising we went into 2014 with the ambition to go even further and to create a world around the star of the ad, Monty.

This led to the development of ‘Monty’s Dens’, in-store areas dedicated to the Christmas campaign that would pop up in all 44 branches of the UK department store. The ‘Dens’ were built around two key elements: an app enabled with virtual reality via Google Cardboard and a truly magical and bespoke Microsoft experience. These activations were focused around promoting Monty, extending the narrative and engaging customers at a deeper level.

A few days before the campaign broke on TV, Monty started popping up on his own TV trailer, while at the same time playing hide & seek on digital outdoor sites.

We then gave their social communities an exclusive preview of the ad before launching Monty in his very own TV premiere break.

In all branches, we created many campaign extensions, including a hardbound book, an e-storybook app and a virtual reality Google Cardboard experience.

In the flagship Oxford Street shop, kids could even bring their own soft toys to life thanks to a truly unique, technological installation with Microsoft.

Monty’s and his ‘Dens’ became the star of Christmas.

The app, ‘Monty’s Christmas’, went on to be downloaded 150,000 times, with over 600,000 sessions and an average dwell time of two minutes. It even reached number 1 in the children’s iPad and iPhone charts.

John Lewis were the first UK advertiser to use Google Cardboard and ‘Monty’s Goggles’ gave thousands of shoppers the chance to experience Monty through virtual reality.

2,600 soft toys were scanned by ‘Monty’s Magical Toy Machine’! Over the duration of 7-weeks that equates to 5 scans per hour! This does not take into account the spectators who watched the machine stretch the imaginations of thousands of kids.

John Lewis posted record Christmas sales: +5.5% year-on-year versus a market average of only +1.5%.

Econometric modelling demonstrates that Monty including the in-store activation drove £141,000,000 incremental revenue. And for every pound spent on Monty returned £7.44 in profit!