2024 Silver Retail and E-commerce

Agency: Uncommon Experience Studio

Client: Not On The High Street

Entry Title: Don’t Gift

Executive Summary

Don’t Gift is a bold statement for a gifting company. But it was key to growing Not On The High Street sales by 6% in a declining market.

Strategy

With 2023’s headlines dominated by the credit crunch, many consumers planned for a scaled-back Christmas. As one of Britain’s biggest gifting platforms, Not On The High Street needed to position itself as the destination for a more cautious approach to gifting.

Working with Attest, the team conducted a nationwide study with 1,500 respondents, which helped it to understand the mindset behind gifting, and shifting traditions. Consumer research revealed a level of guilt about scaling back - not giving as many gifts, or to as many people. And people questioned a behaviour termed ‘obligifting’ - those gifts we give to people we think expect them, or just because we’ve always done it.

A reset was needed, with a more mindful approach to gifting.

Creativity

The joy of the ‘gift fewer gift better’ platform was in setting a brand new behaviour to turn cutting back into a responsible act. The line ‘don’t gift’ built up what better gifting could be. Early-season messages played back the results of the research, quantifying the numbers of socks, mugs, bath salts and candles discarded the year before.

The campaign brought drama to the numbers with special-build posters; one full of actual discarded gifts, another made of socks (all donated to Crisis after the stunt) and a third knocking the Amazons and Temus of the world.

At the heart of the campaign sat the hero content piece, the Don’t Gift Guide: a mix of bad gifts to learn from and good gifts to yearn for. There was a giant box at Westfield London, filled with thousands of unwanted gifts. Next, thousands of socks spelt out the message: DON’T GIFT BORING. Finally, DON’T GIFT BIG BIZ emblazoned across dull brown boxes.

Results

While the gifting sector shrunk by 2% at Christmas 2023, Not On The High Street bucked the trend with 6% growth in sales. On average, claimed buying behaviour from seeing the comms was strong at 67% of those aware of the campaign saying they bought. 87% of these were previous customers who had been stimulated to repurchase, showing the campaign achieving its primary objective of reactivating a legacy customer base.

BVOD delivered 23.6 million impressions throughout the period. OOH saw the highest awareness of all channels, tracking at 15%. Brand tracking metrics showed key consideration drivers trended up: “Unique and bespoke products” up 15 percentage points, “Gifts for the people in my life” up 11 points and “A story behind the products” up 12 points.

The Team

Not On The High Street - Rachel Wells, Head of Brand & Creative - Emilie Mouquot, VP of Marketing - Lauren Cowey, Marketing Communications Manager - Lily Moore, Brand Campaign Executive

Uncommon Experience Studio - Margaux Sloan, Managing Partner - Faye Newbold, Account Director - Leonie Hondeborg, Strategy Director - Ben Golik, Creative Partner - Jacqueline Hedge, Senior Creative - Gracie Hawes, Senior Creative - Paul Robertson, Senior Designer - Shannane Lane, Senior Producer