This year the star of the McDonald’s Christmas Advert is ‘Archie the Reindeer’ , a loveable reindeer brought alive by one girl’s imagination. The advert was hosted on Sunday 17th November during ITV’s flagship show, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! and tells the story of a young girl called Ellie at Christmas.

Ben Fox, Marketing Director, McDonald’s UK and Ireland said: “We’re proud of the role we play in getting the nation Reindeer Ready each Christmas and this year is no exception. We’re celebrating the magic of Christmas through the eyes of Ellie, an imaginative little girl, in an advert which illustrates scenes recognised by parents across the country, as the whole family comes together to get Reindeer ready. We hope the public enjoy Ellie and Archie’s adventure as much as we do.”

Commenting on the campaign, Chaka Sobhani, Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett London said: “This campaign celebrates the power of a child’s imagination which comes even more to life at Christmas time. Kids have that incredible ability to embrace the magical side of Christmas and see wonder where we struggle to especially when teenagers. We hope this Christmas tale of a little girl and her tutu wearing dog warms the heart and gets the country Reindeer Ready.”

As part of the campaign, McDonald’s will be launching a brand-new ‘Archie the Reindeer’ storybook, also available in ebook and audiobook form. Books can be ordered and downloaded from 17th November from the McDonald’s Reindeer Ready Hub. The Reindeer Ready Hub has everything you need to get you and your family in the Christmas mood this festive season, including a competition to win this year’s McDonald’s Christmas jumper, inspired by their festive cups, also launching on 17th November.

Reindeer Ready Live is also returning on the hub this year. This augmented reality tool allows parents to share with their children the magical moment Father Christmas’ reindeer enters their home at Christmas, and will be available for parents to use in the run up to Christmas from 18th December.

With media planning and buying led by OMD UK, families can also create a magical digital experience on Snapchat, with a lens that transforms the user and their dog into a reindeer. Snapchat filters are also available for customers visiting McDonald’s restaurants.

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KABOOKI, the company behind the LEGO Wear license, recently launched a limited edition clothing collection for adults. To promote the new clothing line, We Are Social helped launch ‘The Missing Piece’ – a playful pop-up shop with nothing inside it except a Snapcode on a plinth.

However, when customers loaded up popular camera app, Snapchat, the Snapcode acted as a portal into an augmented reality fashion boutique, where customers could browse and buy the limited edition range of streetwear clothing for adults.

The virtual boutique featured an interactive DJ booth, an arcade machine and, most importantly, exclusive access to the limited-edition fashion range. Visitors who ‘walked in’ via their phone were able to browse products placed on LEGO mannequins and buy online through an integrated ‘Shop now’ feature.

The launch coincides with London Fashion Week, and is a global first for the brand.

The campaign aimed to promote KABOOKI’s limited-edition streetwear collection across the UK, France and Germany, driving traffic to the LEGO Wear e-commerce site.

Birgitte Holgaard Langer, chief operating officer & chief marketing officer at KABOOKI, said: “We loved the idea of experimenting with a new and innovative digital customer experience together with the LEGO team. Approaching the adult fashion audience with this limited-edition clothing line through an AR experience is something we have never done before. We are very excited to see how this new audience will respond to the launch and the AR experience.”

“We’re an innovative, playful brand at heart and part of that is exploring new digital channels and technologies,” says Lea Sandell, Social Media Innovation Lead at the LEGO Group. “This was an unique opportunity to collaborate with KABOOKI on their brand new limited edition product for adults and tap into both the sense of style and the nostalgia of that audience – while exploring that interesting space where the digital and physical worlds merge.”

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J₂O’s favourite limited-edition flavour, Glitterberry, is back, and this year it’s available much earlier than ever before. In stock now, it allows operators to add a festive sparkle to their outlets while maximising seasonal sales opportunities such as Bonfire Night, Halloween and Christmas. The team has been hard at work to create new, limited-edition glassware which for the first time features a snapcode that links to a special J₂O snapchat filter. These are available to all J₂O customers on request, as well as new POS kits, including bar runners, drip mats and strut cards.

Although available for a limited time each year, Glitterberry made a huge impact in the category in 2017, when £9 out of every £10 spent on the flavour was incremental to the category. This emphasises the huge opportunity for operators to offer their customers something different for the festive season.

Britvic will be supporting the launch with a variety of J₂O Glitterberry and orange and passionfruit inspired tools available through www.sensationaldrinks.com. These include a portfolio-led selection of cocktail recipes and serves, to help operators attract customers looking to treat themselves, as well as those moderating their alcohol consumption.

“We know consumers are more social in the run up to Christmas, as well as wanting to drink less alcohol over the festive season. This Christmas we want to help retailers make the most of the sales opportunities this presents, as well as other key occasions like Halloween and Bonfire Night. The early return of J₂O Glitterberry certainly helps to do this, and the Snapchat element to the glassware adds a new level of consumer excitement for this year so we’re encouraging outlets to stock up and register for free POS kits now.”

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Soft drinks company Nichols plc. has launched a new ‘anti-advertising campaign’ for its Vimto brand, with a budget of £3m covering TV, social media (including a Snapchat lens) and digital, a partnership with student-focused viral content site Unilad, experiential sampling and what it says is an industry-first: personalised Video on Demand (VOD) and cinema.

The new ‘I See Vimto in You’ campaign, which launches during Love Island on June 4th, 2018 and runs throughout the summer, repositions the popular soft drinks brand with its target audience of 15-19 year olds. Nichols says the ad is engaging, disruptive and taps into the teen desire to be themselves in a world of constraints.

Its anti-advertising approach even goes as far as to suggest viewers should close their eyes rather than watch the advert. The new campaign also marks the end of brand representative, the Vimtoad, an animated character created by Aardman and introduced in 2014 to represent the product’s disruptive and anarchic element.

Emma Hunt, Head of Marketing at Nichols, says: “The approach is refreshingly different, just like Vimto. We want the ‘I See Vimto in You’ campaign to be a celebration of individuality and a catalyst for fun, encouraging teens to be themselves and take enjoyment from the everyday – like they do when they drink Vimto.”

Nichols says the campaign shouldhelp Vimto significantly increase its current sales value of £78m, claiming that the brand is in one in five households in the UK and continues to outperform the category, growing at +6.0% YOY.

Hunt adds: “The Vimtoad, who has starred in our campaigns over the past four years, has successfully helped us to deliver the message that Vimto is a multi-fruit soft drink. Under his watch, we’ve seen Vimto rise to its highest levels of brand awareness, but now it’s time to appeal to our core target audience in an innovative and contemporary way.”

The ‘I see Vimto in You’ national multi-media campaign will reach over three million teens across the country. This includes the Vimto brand’s return to TV, with the Love Island launch spot on June 4th. It will also break new ground with its unique personalised advertising across cinema and VOD, as well as experiential sampling, social influencer programme, the Snapchat lens and the partnership with Unilad.

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Mobile phone network Three will be running a pop-up ‘All You Can Pug’ brunch to celebrate Puggerfly, the star of its latest ad campaign and, the network claims, the world’s first Augmented Reality (AR) pet.

Three has teamed up with the Pug Café, UK’s leading pop-up event provider for pugs, to create an immersive experience for dog owners and admirers alike. A limited number of tickets are available, priced at £5, which entitles the holder to one 75-minute brunch slot including one main breakfast dish, bottomless pastries, prosecco and coffee or tea, as well as food for their dog, if they bring one.

All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Pug Dog Welfare & Rescue Association.

The pop-up ‘All You Can Pug’ brunch, which will take place on Saturday May 12th, follows the recent announcement that Three has added Snapchat to its range of services offered as part of Go Binge, allowing customers to snap, chat and share without using their data allowance. Three also unveiled the new star of its ad campaign, Puggerfly, a squishy-faced, purple-winged pug, created, according to the network, to embody all things social and fun.

Puggerfly allows users to access different consecutive Snapchat lenses across seven days, letting them nurture and love their Puggerfly as he grows from a ball-chasing, rainbow-pooping puppyfly right through to a fully-fledged flying Puggerfly. Snap’s 12 million UK daily active users can interact with the animated dog, no matter what network they are on. Users can feed Puggerfly treats, play ball with it, enjoy sloppy dog kisses and even watch it twerk to dance music. The seven lenses launched on April 26th, one per day; after the seven days are up, they will be available to Snapchat users via Snapcodes that will be incorporated into Three’s UK wide advertising and media campaign.

The Pug Brunch was created and managed by Three’s PR agency, W Communications.

Three’s ‘All You Can Pug Brunch’ will take place simultaneously in London and Liverpool, with dog owners and admirers invited to head to Covent Garden Grind in London and Love Thy Neighbour in Liverpool for bottomless brunch dishes and the chance to pet pugs. Guests also have the opportunity to capture photos of themselves with Puggerfly’s giant rainbow poo statue (recently seen roaming London’s capital’s streets), dress up their pampered pooches as Puggerfly, or sample all seven Puggerfly Snap codes.

Consumers can book tickets for the one day pop-up pug cafes via https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/Liverpool/ and https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/London/.

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Regulations governing how social media influencers advertise products online are confusing and unclear, with the UK public overwhelmingly believing the system should be more transparent, new research reveals.

The comprehensive survey into influencer marketing was carried out on behalf of Prizeology, a prize promotions agency specialising in promotional regulation and compliance. The survey looked at how the public perceive rules and regulations around influencer marketing.

The research, carried out on 2,015 members of the general public, looked at influencer marketing on social media platforms covering Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest. It overwhelmingly revealed a worrying lack of knowledge around the rules governing advertising by influencers.

A huge majority – 71% of people – wrongly believe that there are no regulations surrounding influencer marketing. Nearly two-thirds (61%) believe that influencers do not have to state that they have been paid to talk about a product – which is incorrect, because under consumer protection legislation, influencers must state if they are being paid to promote a brand’s products. The CAP Code, the code of conduct which is part of the UK’s self-regulatory system covering advertising and marketing in the UK, reflects and reinforces the legal position, and a number of complaints against brands have been upheld by industry regulator the Advertising Standards Authority for insufficient clarity in publicising commercial relationships with bloggers, vloggers and other social media influencers.

Half (49%) of the UK public were unaware of the relevant language or tags like #ad which are supposed to appear on paid-for posts to show that paid-for product promotion is involved; 33% of these were young people aged between 18-24, which suggests consumer confusion is not restricted to the older age brackets.

The research also clearly showed that the general public believes that they should be informed if people are being paid to promote products: 88% of the survey sample agreed with this statement, with 60% agreeing that their perception of a brand is improved when they are transparent about product promotion.

Sarah Burns, Managing Director of Prizeology and an expert on compliance and regulation in the promotional marketing sector, says: “The results are extremely interesting and overwhelmingly show a shocking lack of knowledge and confusion amongst all age groups – including teenagers – about the way that brands use social media influencers to advertise their products.”

Well over two-thirds (71%) of those questioned felt that more should be done to force disclosure.

Brands are also in danger of having their reputations damaged by lack of transparency, with 44% of those surveyed saying they felt that influencer marketing is damaging and 66% of people agreeing that their perception of a brand improved when they were transparent about product placement. Burns comments: “This should be a wake-up call to brands to make sure that they are acting within the rules when working with influencers. The public do not want to be duped and brands could suffer as a result.”

She concludes: “It is clear that this is an area of promotion that is growing rapidly, and the regulations need to be enforced more rigorously to keep pace with its growth. Now is the time to take action. I know the Advertising Standards Authority has committed to comprehensive education and enforcement this year, and our research shows that this would be welcomed by consumers.”

The survey of 2,015 people, representative of the UK by age, gender and region, was conducted by Vitreous World Ltd for Prizeology between January 30th and February 2^nd 2018. A white paper and full breakdown of the survey and results can be downloaded from the Prizeology website.

Prizeology is a prize promotions agency working with brands to engage customers. It specialises in compliance and best practice and helps brands and businesses run prize promotions which stick to the rules and regulations.

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Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) has launched its biggest-ever Halloween campaign for Fanta, including exclusively designed packaging, smaller 150ml can multipacks, an advertising and experiential marketing campaign and on-pack codes to unlock special Halloween Snapchat filters.

CCEP says it wants to help retailers make the most of what has become the second biggest seasonal selling event for soft drinks in Great Britain.

The new ghoulish graphics on packs of Fanta have been specially designed by renowned Israeli artist Noma Bar and will run until November 11^th 2017, encouraging young adults and gatekeeper mums to stock up for the seasonal occasion. Noma Bar also illustrated Fanta cans for Coca-Cola in 2016.

The packaging will appear in the UK on a range of plain and PMP formats, including 2L and 500ml PET bottles, 330ml and 6x330ml can multipacks, of Fanta Orange, Fanta Orange Zero, Fanta Fruit Twist and Fanta Fruit Twist Zero. The Halloween themed packs will also coincide with the arrival of the 500ml PET Fanta Twist bottle which made its debut in the 2L format earlier this summer.

The brand will also be introducing Halloween themed limited edition 12x150ml mini can multipacks of Fanta Orange Zero and Fanta Fruit Twist Zero. These formats are designed to appeal to consumers who are less frequent buyers of carbonated soft drinks but are looking to stock up on smaller formats for their Halloween festivities.

The Fanta campaign marks CCEP’s biggest ever investment in Halloween, and includes a multi-million pound marketing campaign that will feature themed in-store visuals, point-of-sale material, digital out-of-home advertising and experiential and virtual reality ‘Fright Night’ activity to drive awareness of the brand’s Halloween activities.

Simon Harrison, operational marketing director GB at Coca-Cola European Partners, said: “Halloween is now the fourth biggest retail event in Great Britain and represents a huge opportunity for retailers and brands alike. Our Fanta Halloween campaign is bigger and better than last year and delivers a real point of difference thanks to the unique Noma Bar illustrations which will help retailers build excitement around the occasion, driving sales as consumers stock up for their celebrations.

Coca-Cola European Partners is the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler. CCEP is the sole licensed bottler for products of The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) in Andorra, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Luxemburg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

In the UK, CCEP make, sell and deliver Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Coca-Cola Life, Fanta, Dr Pepper, Sprite, Schweppes, Schweppes Abbey Well, glacéau, Powerade, Oasis, Appletiser and 5 Alive. It also handles Monster, Relentless, and Capri-Sun.

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Xbox has installed a series of Christmas lights that form the first-ever game trailer consumers can actually walk through. The lights – installed in the shopping plaza in London’s Brunswick Centre – don’t feature traditional festive imagery. Instead, they tell a story about hordes of flesh-eating zombies, to promote the new Christmas-themed zombie game Dead Rising 4.

The game was developed by Capcom and published in partnership with Microsoft. It launched on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC on December 6^th 2016.

The night before the official launch, the game’s online fan-base worked together to switch on the lights. By interacting with a cryptic Facebook Live stream of a zombie hand suspended above a button, Xbox followers moved the hand downward to press the switch and turn on the display, revealing the trailer to the world.

Created by advertising agency McCann London, the Dead Rising Lights consist of nine panels of lights, suspended consecutively above a busy shopping plaza. The lights switch on and off in sequence to reveal a brand new narrative to gamers. As with all Xbox game trailers, it begins with the PEGI age rating logo and concludes with the iconic green Xbox end-frame.

The direct-response switch-on mechanism was part of a fully-integrated campaign revolving around the light installation, comprising:

• Live streaming on Facebook Live, Twitch and Periscope.
• A festive event to mark the turning-on of the trailer.
• Geo-fenced Snapchat filters.
• An immersive, interactive 360° video so that those unable to visit the London installation can remotely experience it.

Adrian Simons, Director of Global Windows and Devices at Microsoft, says: “Most Christmas lights are switched on by celebrities, but in this case the honour went to Xbox’s global fan-base. And they are not just any lights, they bring to life a new form of game trailer which we believe is a world first. This is a fun, bold and innovative undertaking in keeping with our commitment to our fans – and it’s all done in the true spirit of the game.”

Laurence Thomson, Chief Creative Officer at McCann London, adds: “We wanted to reinvent the game trailer to connect with today’s gamers. What better way to celebrate the festive season and the launch of Dead Rising 4 than a gory Zombie apocalypse lit up in glorious technicolor? By subverting the traditional Christmas light display, we’re kicking the schmaltzy Christmas advert out of the window and instead appealing to gamers’ tongue-in-cheek attitude.”

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