Feels like home

Expanding the scope from the previous year’s offering, the ‘feels like home’ campaign was built around highlighting the moments at home, both big and small, that matter. The campaign included advertising, paid-for and organic social media, online video and a new campaign landing page as well as engaging with influencers to promote the campaign.

The highlight of ‘feels like home’ was an exciting return to broadcast TV with a 90-second animated ad entitled ‘Doll’s House’. Launching online on 17^th November, the advert had its TV premiere on Channel 5 on 22^nd November and continued to air throughout the entire festive season on both Channel 5 and a selection of Sky channels.

Inspired by reports in the media of lockdown and pandemic pressures causing rifts in otherwise happy homes, Doll’s House uses a beautiful hand-animated art style to tell the heart-warming story of a young girl whose parents are going through a rough patch but are brought together at Christmas.

To ensure the music perfectly complemented the emotional story of the ad, our art director Craig wrote and produced the accompanying soundtrack – a first for CIB – with beautiful vocals from a talented singer named Gracie. Following the premiere, the song was released on music platforms including Spotify, Amazon Music and iTunes.

In the pre-launch phase, the campaign also sought to encourage employee engagement, with Alpha staff being asked to submit their ‘feels like home’ moment with small prizes given to make those moments special. With the launch of the campaign, this was extended to customers, with hundreds of entries covering a range of ‘feels like home’ moments. This included: walking up to your door after a long day, a Friday night takeaway with the family, birthday traditions and the beautiful story of a Christmas tree angel passed down from mother to daughter. The best of these ‘moments’ were developed into social media assets to further expand the reach and awareness of the campaign.

The high volume of excellent entries from homeowners was in part due to the success we had working with four carefully selected lifestyle influencers to promote the competition. Primarily using Instagram, these influencers created videos and Instagram Stories to tell their followers, which when combined totals more than 210,000, about Alpha and the competition. For example, the three frame Instagram story produced by Mrs Meldrum reached 32,000 accounts, with almost 500 actions taken as a result of the post and 168 clicks through to the Alpha website.

• 285 TV ad spots across the festive season.
• 61% shown during peak airtime
• 2.2 million impacts
• Over 16,100 views of the advert on YouTube in the first two months.
• More than 12,300 page views for the landing page between the launch and mid-January.
• 503 competition entries.
• 20,800 impressions on campaign social media posts.