A Christmas PR activation for Tesco to provide a little help for its customers

THE CHALLENGE

Get media cut-through and extensive coverage at one of the busiest times of the year.

THE BRIEF

Create a Christmas activation that shows Tesco understands its customers and is providing a little extra help over the festive period.

THE SOLUTION

We commissioned research looking into the nation’s festive frustrations. This revealed that one of the most irritating jobs at Christmas is the task of untangling the tree lights, and that the UK town most frustrated by their knotted decorations is Wrexham in North Wales. So we employed the UK’s first ever ‘Christmas Tree Lights Untangler’ to make light work of this Yuletide bugbear.

We delivered a three-phased media plan to ensure we sustained the conversation and story over a longer period of time:

The search for the light untangler – we placed a job ad in a local Wrexham paper and sold in a news alert about the search for this expert.

We revealed how many people applied for the position – there were over 100 applicants. 

We revealed the successful applicant and filmed her advice on how to untangle lights – we created a news alert revealing Anya Mugridge as our light untangler and information on when her light untangling service would be in-store. Alongside this we had a behind the scenes video of the interview process and Anya’s step by step guide on how to best untangle lights.

THE OUTCOME

• The activity cut through with media in a very big way, delivering 155 pieces of coverage, with an OTS of over 1 billion!
• The story became a national talking point, with five TV shows running the story including ITV’s Loose Women, BBC News and BBC One’s ‘Have I Got News For You’
• An impressive 62 radio stations talked about the story with interviews appearing on BBC Radio Wales and Capital FM
• 18 national print and online publications also reported on the story, with an additional 42 online websites secured
• Over 100 people applied for the job of light untangler