Capitalising on our early access to Facebook's brand new augmented reality platform, we created a magic algorithm that enchanted the whole country: "Emojional Christmas" Facebook's first AR game! By opening the Facebook camera on their phones, users were invited to challenge family and friends to match their facial expressions with the emojis falling in the filter. We also launched four more filters where up to three users together could transform into the four staples of the UK's Christmas dinner - Roast Turkey, Brussels Sprout, Mince Pie and Christmas Pudding. Within the Brussels Sprout filter, we invited users to share their opinion on these divisive vegetables by winking if they're Sprouters or sticking their tongue out if they're Doubters. To help promote it, we brought in UK's favourite Santa Claus - the one and only Brian Blessed.

We wanted to hack Facebook's Camera Effects Platform. Our objective was to build a gamified experience on a system designed to support only filters. So, first, we analysed the opportunities within the platform's API. Then, using the face tracking abilities of the platform, we created our own algorithms that could detect individual facial expressions. Once we could determine those, we matched them against predefined values of our custom-made emojis, and the game was born. To make it even more competitive, scores were sent to our online High-Score system and users were provided with real-time rankings of their performance. The campaign launched two weeks before Christmas and through the holidays. It was promoted on Facebook with paid social ads.

The campaign was a success with more than 2 million people interacting more than 4 million times with the game. Combined, people spent 13,310 hours total dwell time. People loved it, 61% explicitly shared positivity and excitement. It even got 442,065 shares. All this without taking time away from the family celebrations.

To keep customers in-store, we wanted more people to talk about Lidl. So, using social listening and search data, we identified the holiday moments that get people talking online. We landed on Friendsmas as one of the more positive conversational moments in social, especially amongst a very vocal target audience: young-professional shoppers. Digging into dinner-table behaviour further, we realised how our audience always has their phones out - even during the holidays. We set out to embrace this behaviour, using social media to bring people in the room together instead of distracting them from the family celebrations.

Lidl is a supermarket challenger brand with a daunting mission: convincing customers that they can go big on quality and little on price. Every Christmas this mission gets even tougher, as customers trade up to the big 4 supermarkets for their Christmas shopping. At a time when all competitors gear up for the marketing battle of the year, we had to stand out to add value to the brand and keep customers in-store.