John Lewis & Partners

People are always looking for clues to discover the John Lewis & Partners Christmas ad and after 10 years of keeping it a secret, our worst fear materialised – it had been leaked! How could we build anticipation when people knew what they were looking for? By building intrigue and mystery, we knew we could get people guessing about the ad again.

Partnering with ITV we identified the most popular shows with the most memorable theme tunes, swapping them for piano versions. These theme tunes hadn’t been touched since launch. Coronation Street hadn’t changed its theme tune for 60 years!

People were shocked by it, some outraged, but the guessing game began and everyone from Philip Schofield to the shows’ actors couldn’t stop questioning what had happened to the nation’s favourite theme tunes.

Against all the rules we let the audience that anticipates the ad the most – the John Lewis Partners – share the content organically rather than invest big in pushing it out.

The results were incredible, generating even more conversation and excitement than 2017, record-breaking sentiment and 16mil+ views in under 24 hours, leading to the biggest sales week in John Lewis & Partners’ history.