On Christmas Eve in the UK, millions of excited children leave a mince pie for Santa and a carrot for his reindeer by the chimney breast.

We dramatised this charming tradition to make a humble, everyday carrot the hero of the Aldi Christmas commercial. A magical way to communicate the brand positioning.

Christmas is a day like any other, and your home and town are the same places that they always are, and yet they are transformed into something magical and special. Aldi with its unique combinations of price and quality can do this for more people, not just the better off.

What better way to do this than to take the most everyday thing and transform it into something ‘amazing’, using it to showcase all of the ‘Amazing’ things available at Aldi at Christmas and have them brought to you by the most everyday of items.

Inspired by all of the millions of children who leave one out for Rudolf every year alongside a mince pie for Father Christmas, we settled on a carrot – called Kevin - who wanted to meet Santa, walked us all through Aldi’s amazing Christmas range and in process won the hearts of the public.

• 7.8 million views on social media.

• Record Christmas sales, up 15.1% on December 2015.

• 38. 8 million impressions.

• 1 million interactions.

• 18.27% engagement.

• Our soft toy ‘carrot’ sold out within 30 minutes of going on sale, then appeared on eBay

for ten times the original price.

Aldi’s best Christmas ever was delivered by a carrot… called Kevin.

Launched with a 60 second TV commercial, with 12 smaller product commercials to follow, Kevin the Carrot soon went viral. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, he quickly became massive. Our soft toy ‘Kevins’ sold out in a day. We just couldn’t grow them fast enough – so consumers started knitting their own. They took ‘Kevin’ on adventures all over the world – and posted pictures to consumer generated fan pages. He even inspired creative writing in schools and was used as a learning tool for sign language.

Since 2011 Aldi had enjoyed fantastic growth.

However the key Christmas trading period remained a challenge for Aldi.

At Christmas Aldi shoppers - mainly mass market Mums with younger kids - ‘trade up and out’ to treat themselves to expensive luxuries because:

a. They don’t feel it Aldi has the full range of these products.

b. They worry Aldi will run out of stock on key lines.

c. Aldi is too associated with everyday shopping and does not feel festive.

It represents a time when all shoppers become less loyal and shop around more, and when food retailers spend a disproportionally large amount of their marketing budget on holding onto exiting shoppers and enticing in new ones.

Aldi needed to address this shortfall to avoid a dismal Christmas in 2016.

They could not easily change their product range, store size or shopper experience so the only option left was communications.

Capitalise on the excitement and anticipation of Christmas advertising, under the brand proposition ‘Everyday Amazing.’