For the launch of its 'Man on the Moon' app, John Lewis teamed up with The Sunday Times to tap into readers' trust of newspapers and drive engagement beyond just its Christmas TV advert.

1. John Lewis Sunday Times Christmas Partnership
Executive Summary
Christmas is a crucial time for John Lewis, driving 40% of their yearly sales. Since John Lewis has
become infamous for their Christmas TV adverts they haven’t used print in their branding campaign,
until 2015. We needed to launch the Man on the Moon app as part of the overall campaign in a
market where we know there is a lot of app competition. We tapped into the newsbrand medium
which we know the audience trusted in order to drive engagement and downloads. We ran an
exclusive 4 page poster pull out in the centre of Sunday Times Newspaper which was the biggest
driver of the app downloads outside of launch day. The number of downloads and average session
per download increased YoY.
Background & Insight
It’s no secret that Christmas is the most important time for a retailer, making up a large percentage
of the yearly sales (up to 40%). But for John Lewis it’s more than an opportunity to sell; it’s an
opportunity to connect with people in a very special way. The campaign challenge is to create fame
for John Lewis at Christmas and win the hearts of the British public, evolving our campaign every
year to make it bigger and better, ensuring we stay ahead of the competition.
The John Lewis’ 2015 Christmas campaign would once again adopt emotional storytelling and centre
on ‘thoughtful gifting’. This year’s story was the ‘Man on the Moon’. Everyone sees the TV advert
but this year we wanted builder a deeper engagement with the audience. We wanted to engage our
key “Family” audience in the story we developed an app to showcase the magic of Christmas,
featuring an addictive game, and an educational Augmented Reality function. The AR feature
triggered fun-fact overlays when the device was pointed at the moon; The AR could also be activated
by using key imagery across all owned media including carrier bags, point-of-sale and click and
collect boxes.
However, the app world is very competitive, there are now 1.8 million apps to choose from up from
1.6 in 2014 and 1.0 in 2013. Research shows that most people only use 3 apps a week (eMarketer
2015) therefore, you need an app to stand out to get noticed and give people a reason to go back to
it.

2. Through Touchpoints, we know that newsbrands resonate well with the family target audience and
they perceive it to be the most trusted medium therefore a great partner to work together with to
launch the app. Furthermore, national newspapers have the highest solus concentration levels than
any other media (Source: Newsworks the battle for attention) which makes it a perfect media to use
when “how to” information needs to be communicated.
One of John Lewis’s 2015 Christmas objectives was digitalise the campaign to a greater extent than
previous years. Plus to drive downloads of the Man in The Moon App in order for people to regularly
engage with the campaign beyond just the TV advert. We needed to prompt this action through
media.
The Plan
Historically print was not been used in the Christmas branding campaigns, print has been utilised to
land the Christmas offers. For 2015 though, John Lewis needed a media partner to help launch the
app, there was a lot of pressure for it to succeed so we needed to go BIG with it. A newsbrand was a
perfect partner for this because not only do they perform well against the Brand Lover audience
(families) but they are a great vehicle to promote the app and provides high dwell time with depth
to detail out the specifics of the app.
We partnered with Sunday Times because they are the BIGGEST circulating quality Sunday
newspaper and the best performing title (coverage and Index) against the John Lewis Brand Lover
audience out of all the quality newspapers. Being a broadsheet newspaper meant that not only
were we in the biggest circulating title, but also actually one of the BIGGEST sized newspapers!!
Perfect for IMPACT. We executed a bespoke 4 page pull out with the Sunday Times which ran in the
centre of the newspaper (it was imperative that we ran in main news to ensure maximum exposure).
Sunday Times 4 page pull-out (22nd
November 2015)

3. The pull out provided details of the App, when you opened it out it was an epic picture of the Moon
that families could hang on their wall and learn about the lunar cycle all throughout November and
December. The poster was exclusive for Sunday Times readers and couldn’t be bought in store.
Each day users would use the AR within the app and point it to the moon image on the poster to
discover new daily surprises and facts about the moon, giving people the reason to engage with the
campaign EVERYDAY. The poster ran on the 22nd
November to ensure people had enough time to
download the app and have the poster for the full moon which was on the 25th
November. There
were daily messages up until the next full moon which was on Christmas Day.
Bespoke co-branded 25x4’s ran in the lead up to the special issue ensuring people bought the
Sunday Times on the 22nd
November for the exclusive poster.
Tease: 15th
& 21st
December 2015
Results
The overall Christmas campaign was a HUGE success and over delivered on all KPI’s including higher
sales growth, higher football/web traffic, higher ROI than previous years (source: Marketshare
economics) and brand fame increased from 85% to 93% (way above the 82% UK norm).
The TV exposure and press coverage generated huge public interest, and got more people searching
for our ad online than ever before (Source: Google Trends)
The Sunday Times activity was the biggest driver of downloads outside of launch day. It even drove
higher downloads than ITV adsync with X Factor drove a high level of
downloads after the initial launch proving that the execution was effective.
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
06/11/2015
08/11/2015
10/11/2015
12/11/2015
14/11/2015
16/11/2015
18/11/2015
20/11/2015
22/11/2015
24/11/2015
26/11/2015
28/11/2015
30/11/2015
02/12/2015
04/12/2015
06/12/2015
08/12/2015
10/12/2015
12/12/2015
14/12/2015
16/12/2015
18/12/2015
20/12/2015
22/12/2015
24/12/2015
26/12/2015
28/12/2015
30/12/2015
Total App Downloads – MOTM App
Android Android Tablet iPad iPhone

4. The Man on the Moon app was downloaded over 100k times, we know that 26k of these were
driven by media (the Sunday Times pull out), this is up +300% YoY. Plus, the cost per download was
reduced from £5.68 to £3.04 YoY proving that newsbrands are cost effective. Average sessions per
download increased from 4 to 5, meaning that we gave people a reason to come back to the app and
the poster was kept beyond the issue date.
Client Quote:
“A fantastic execution which really drove the downloads for the app” Sarah Atkins, John Lewis