Yahoo helped retailer Asda achieve its goal of being seen as the top choice for Christmas shopping. Through content on Yahoo sites and a Tumblr blog with the hashtag "#becauseitschristmas", Asda was positioned as inspiring, innovative, and fun. The campaign included videos and gifs showing holiday fun with family. After exposure to the campaign, people saw Asda as more of a fun brand and as a brand that sets trends. Most importantly, the percentage of people who said they would do their primary Christmas shopping at Asda increased.

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Yahoo helped position Asda as the go-to shop for the Christmas period. By utilising a
combination of editorial-style articles across Yahoo and engaging, gif-heavy content on
Tumblr, Asda were able to shift purchase intent away from their competitors, whilst
positioning themselves as inspiring, innovative and fun. Asda took full advantage of the
positive and inclusive environments that Tumblr fosters, enabling them to connect
emotionally with an audience of full-time parents with the hashtag
#becauseitschristmas.
Festive success
for Asda
with Yahoo

2. Yahoo were presented with the challenge of making Asda the go-to shop for the Christmas period.
To help Asda achieve this, Yahoo created the innovative and inspiring #becauseitschristmas Tumblr
blog. Tumblr was the perfect platform to meet Asda’s objective of connecting emotionally with their
audience as it offers such strong opportunities for earned media, whilst Yahoo provided editorial nous
and a huge distribution platform through Gemini Native. The organic sharing of content clearly
demonstrates an authentic emotional connection with a brand.
The campaign
This campaign consisted of content, co-created by both Yahoo and Asda and housed on the Tumblr blog, as well as distribution of
this content both organically and via paid media, such as Tumblr Sponsored Posts and Yahoo Gemini Native Ads.
The #becauseitschristmas Tumblr page showcased a suite of creative, including animated gifs, images and video. An impactful
video, filling the entire first screen of the page, fitted seamlessly with a simultaneous TV advert utilising the same themes, making
this a truly cross-media campaign. The video’s portrayal of festive family fun served to inspire viewers and build anticipation about
the rest of the page content.
The content was distributed in three buckets: launch, momentum and celebration. This ensured it was most relevant to people
according to time, location and ad format. Each bucket was based around a different theme: fun, food and family gatherings.
The first bucket helped drive more shoppers to believe Asda “is a brand for people like me”. The second, core campaign bucket
aimed to make people believe Asda “is a brand I can trust”. This phase utilised content marketing to encourage shoppers to link
to festive recipes via mouth-watering gifs. The final bucket focused around making shoppers believe Asda “offers all I need” and
“is a positive influence in my life”. These buckets were carefully designed to give the campaign clear measurement targets against
Asda’s objectives.
The results
This campaign was an undeniable success. Yahoo met Asda’s objectives of shifting purchase intent away from
their competitors, whilst positioning themselves as inspiring, innovative and fun. The content itself was a huge hit,
with an overall earned media result of 64% on Tumblr activity and with 7 out of 14 articles appearing on our star
editorial placement - the Yahoo.
Yahoo’s post-campaign ad effectiveness study, in partnership with Millward Brown, confirmed that Asda gained an
uplift of 16% in “Asda as a fun brand” when comparing respondents before and after they saw the campaign.
There was a 13% uplift in people who believe Asda is a brand that “sets trends”, showing the #becauseitschristmas
Tumblr met its aim of being innovative.
Asda wanted to create enjoyable and inspiring content. We found through measuring enjoyment that 70% found
Asda more appealing after visiting the site. Not only did this campaign establish Asda as fun and innovative, it also
showed uplift in brand favourability for Asda. Before being exposed to the campaign, 63% of respondents stated
that they would conduct their primary Christmas shop at a different competitor supermarket. After seeing this
campaign, only 54% said they still would.
Most impressively, after seeing the campaign, 61% of people said they would make Asda their first choice
supermarket for Christmas, which was up 9%, when compared to those who said they would not. This clearly met
Asda’s specific objective of ‘winning Christmas’ and contributed to delivering this smash-hit campaign.
Campaign success all wrapped up
Yahoo and Tumblr warm up leads for Asda over Christmas time
Like what you see?
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contact your Account Manager or info-yahoo@yahoo-inc.com.
64%EARNED MEDIA
70%MORE APPEALING
+FUN
+TRENDY
FIRST
CHOICE