For ten months of the year Aldi had a winning formula. As Britain’s fastest-growing grocer it was famous for low prices on everyday items. Yet at Christmas everything changed. Aldi’s greatest strength became its biggest weakness.

For Aldi’s most loyal customers Aldi was the go-to destination for the weekly-shop; it lacked the inspiration and specialness customers desired at Christmas. So they traded up-and-out to more premium and Christmassy stores. Aldi missed out on customers’ biggest shop of the year and each Christmas suffered a drop in market-share and sales to the tune of £26m.

Research showed these loyal Aldi shoppers (typically mass-markets families and Mums) spend disproportionally more on Christmas than non-Aldi shoppers, but didn’t spend it at Aldi.

Christmas is the UK’s superbowl of advertising so Aldi needed to reach customers in a way that would cut-through and inspire increased purchases from our loyal customers to reduce the trade-out in the run up to Christmas.

Campaign objectives:

• Increase Christmas sales-growth, reduce trade-out in December by 1.5%, achieve +5% Christmas penetration.

• Maintain/improve shopper loyalty, improve perception of Aldi’s Christmas range and value, and increase shopper consideration.

Aldi already knew plenty about customers’ attitudes and behaviours. What demanded fresh insight was how these evolved in the run-up to Christmas, including why customers traded-out to competing supermarkets.

We employed our ‘Truth App’ - a mobile app where consumers carry a research tool with them to track 20 families’ shopping lives over 9 weeks up to Christmas 2017 and we commissioned a weekly omnibus survey of 1000 shoppers to understand how these findings represented the UK-population.

The responses; video diaries, photos, surveys, ratings, and reviews, plus quantitative validation, were vividly revealing.

• A week before Christmas, shoppers who buy their turkey at Aldi spend 3x more than those who don’t.

• But shoppers make up their mind about where to buy their turkey end-November. If we don’t get them by then, we miss them.

• Aldi’s most loyal shoppers were saving money for Christmas year-round, spending far more than average at Christmas, budgeting for and purchasing gifts months in advance, and emotionally, far more engaged with Christmas, far earlier.

Through focus groups we also learnt that customers LOVED Kevin the Carrot.

By contrast, Aldi’s Christmas marketing was too low key and too late. We realised we need to talk

Brand spokesman and lovable everyday hero Kevin the Carrot returned for the third year to guide customers through Aldi's Christmas range.

The campaign launched with a TV teaser ad parodying the Coca Cola Truck, followed by a Christmas national launch ad, TV VOD and Digital Video spots, OOH, and Kevin the Carrot merchandise.

As a direct result of the research, Aldi:

Published its best price on fresh turkey well before products arrived, aired a turkey ad much earlier than usual and placed a turkey-focused front page ad on The Telegraph the weekend before fresh turkeys went on sale.

For the first time in the UK, launched a Christmas Fresh food brochure to reassure customers on quality and posted reassuring information about Aldi’s turkey suppliers and videos of the turkey farms on its website.

Aldi was the fastest growing supermarket at Christmas, achieving +10.4% sales growth.

The number of Aldi loyal customers trading up-and-out to competing supermarkets decreased. Aldi saw the largest increase in shopper loyalty and penetration compared to competing supermarkets.

Turkey sales on fresh turkey launch day increased by 21% YoY.

Perception and consideration improved; people were more likely to shop at Aldi after viewing the ads.

The country got carrot fever: Aldi’s Christmas campaign was the public’s most liked Christmas ad of 2018

People baked, crocheted and crafted their own Kevins; they took him on holiday, children shared his story on World Book Day, and he became Instagram's orange equivalent of Elf on the Shelf.

On the day the toys went on sale, Orange Thursday, more people in the UK searched for 'Kevin' than 'Santa'.

And Kevin the Carrot even became immortalised as a tattoo!

The UK preserves Christmas traditions beyond any other season and buying of both gifts and food is loaded with emotional influences that matter much less during the rest of the year.

The Christmas turkey is one such tradition and people are very reluctant to risk getting inferior quality. Perceived quality of food and drinks also matters more at Christmas because so many households receive visitors and are cognisant of gaining their positive verdict and compliments.

Although increasingly successful year-round, these cultural ‘norms’ favour premium and established brands making Christmas a more challenging trading period for Aldi.

Also, Christmas is the time when the ordinary becomes the extraordinary (e.g. a roast dinner becomes Christmas dinner). Aldi’s positioning is ‘Everyday Amazing’ so to stop the trade-out we found the most everyday item (a carrot) and positioned him as the humble hero who saved Christmas, showing that everyone could have an amazing Christmas.