Follow the stars to Morrisons

With just over six weeks until Christmas Day, it is no surprise that the festive advertising campaigns for the big retailers have started to grace our TV screens.

The latest retailer to air their campaign is Morrisons - the first of the 'big 4' retailers to do so.

Advertising for the Morrisons brand of recent has been heavily celebrity endorsed - with Alan Hansen, Nick Hancock and Melanie Sykes all featuring in previous adverts - however it is Richard Hammond and Denise van Outen who feature in this year's Christmas advert for the brand.

In the advert, Richard Hammond is pushing a shopping trolley through various festive scenes; such as carol singers in the snow, ice skating in a park, a queue for 'Santa's Grotto' and the Christmas lights being switched on in a snow dusted town by Denise van Outen.

Whilst Hammond makes his way through the numerous scenes on his way to Morrisons, he describes all the food that he loves at Christmas - noting that he especially likes it when it is fresh. These descriptions alone are enough to tempt everyone depicted in these scenes to follow him to Morrisons. The advert concluded with the slogan 'A Fresh Christmas for Everyone'.

The advert first launched on the 7th November 2009 and despite there only being three days between the advert airing and this article being written, due to BrandIndex data updating daily it is possible to see the initial uplift to scores on Monday 9th November from the day before the advert aired (Friday 6th November).

The accompanying table illustrates just how impressive the initial uplift for the Morrisons brand has been following the advert.

Prior to the advert launching, 'Buzz', Index, Value and Recommend scores were at +21.0, +30.4, +42.7 and +29.0 respectively. By the Monday, Morrisons had seen an increase in Index scores of 1.4pts to +31.8 - driven by improvements in the brand's Value for Money (up 2.8pts to +45.5) and Recommend scores (up 6.7pts to +35.7).

Couple these increases with a strong uplift in 'Buzz' (of 6.3pts) and it looks like the Christmas advert for Morrisons is going to be a success. Given that these uplifts are for a single day increase, it would appear that Morrisons’ faith in the use of Celebrity endorsements is continuing to pay dividends.