Sainsbury's: YouTube is for Sharing

Sainsbury's, a British supermarket chain, created Christmas campaigns that used YouTube to embed its brand at the heart of popular culture.

Executive Summary

Sainsbury's Christmas campaigns used YouTube to embed themselves at the heart of popular culture. Of how – from 2013's 'Christmas in a Day' through to 2016's 'The Greatest Gift' – we built 74,893,046 views, generating a VoD ROI of at least £236 for every £1 spent.

All this was in the face of our toughest ever market conditions, and drastic YOY declines in media spend.

YouTube was never a tactical addendum to our campaign – it was the strategic heart of it. It enabled us to reach success by creating advertising indistinguishable from entertainment.

Each year was different,...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands