The Christmas campaign that never was: Lonely Bounty, the underdog Celebration
Ah, Christmas. If like us, you love a great Christmas marketing campaign then you’ll acknowledge that John Lewis has knocked it out of the park year-after-year with its fancy adverts. We love something that pulls on the heartstrings (and a bit of cheese doesn’t go amiss now and again).
That brings me onto a campaign we created that, sadly, didn’t see the light of day. Back in 2019 (approximately 100 years ago), we came up with our dream Christmas campaign for Bounty. Yes, the coconut confectionary with palm trees and white sands adorning its packaging may not be synonymous with the festive season, but we wanted to change that...
The beginning
One of us saw a meme about how Bounty tends to be the last chocolate left in the Celebration tub. Despite being quite partial to one, we were aware of Bounty’s Marmite-like quality. So, an idea was formed. With celebration tubs aplenty over the festive season, we wanted to tap into the notion of Bounty as the under appreciated Christmas gem, and so the idea of “Lonely Bounty” was born!
The idea
Aiming for the Christmas season, we wanted to take the classic Christmas advert concept and lean into the notion that Bounty may not be the most popular of among its Celebration cohorts.
Our narrative was set!
Of course, no good festive campaign is complete without an epic song, something abstract like Jessie Ware, Say You Love Me? Or Olly Murs’ cover of It’ll Be Lonely This Christmas?
Both were considered. We were taking this seriously.
Ideas for the ad itself ranged from a child offering the leftover Bounty’s to his elderly neighbour who loves them, through to the camera honed in on a lonely last Bounty in the tub as Christmas goes on around them (before someone finally nabs it).
We even listed the domain lonelybounty.com, just in case.
You can see the briefest of an outline below:
Campaign slogan: Lonely Bounty
Key creative: Classic Christmas ad
Key stunt: Partner with e-commerce brand to send Lonely Bounty sweets to 50,000 UK homes to springboard the launch of the campaign.
Operational outputs: Social, digital, news campaign partnering with a charity to shed light on the serious issue of loneliness at Christmas.
Other ideas included:
Bounty-only tubs, with all money going to charity
Finding celebrities who claim Bounty is their fave and sending tubs out to them
Out-of-home campaign in Britain’s most isolated train station, Corrour railway station, Highlands, Scotland.
SAY YOU LOVE ME was one of the front runners for the campaign.
Christmas = charity
Creating a Christmas campaign centred around a lonely chocolate, we suggested partnering with Campaign to End Loneliness to highlight that a significant number of people spend the festive period alone. Giving the campaign true heart and real reason to exist.
The idea seems even more significant in 2020. So, if anyone at Mars is reading, get in touch!
Twas the night before Christmas
Only a few months after sending this concept to Mars, we saw Cadburys run with a version of the idea. Of course, no idea is original, but we do like to think someone at Mars spotted it and made the move to Cadbury’s. We’ll never know, and that’s the magic we suppose!
So, here’s to Bounty, the best chocolate in the tub, in our opinion! If you’re interested, you can see our booklet of Lonely Bounty ideas you can download it for free below.
If you want us to create and implement ideas for a Christmas campaign (or any time of the year), get in touch with us today. We’d love to help.