Boots Keeps It Positive With an Autumn Winner

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Boots and agency VML are going big and bold for Autumn with a major new brand campaign, built around the tagline “Give It Some Boots”. Like many of the retailer’s recent successful campaigns it’s an upbeat, lively, emotional ad built around the brand’s keen understanding of consumer needs. It launched in Autumn which is a key moment for people to reset, refresh and grab hold of life, looking tough times and difficulties in the face with new positivity. 

That’s the vibe of the “Give It Some Boots” 60 second hero ad, which earns our Ad Of The Week spot this week. Soundtracked by a sharp new reworking of classic tune “These Boots Are Made For Walking”, the ad is a montage of women of all ages, looks and walks of life as they tackle their beauty dilemmas head-on (with a little help from Boots, of course).  

There’s dancing, smiles and plenty of sympathy as people from a young person with skin troubles to a woman dealing with chemo-induced hair loss find the products and advice they’re looking for. It’s an ad that doesn’t flinch from life’s tough realities, but which also encourages viewers to take them on and ‘give it some Boots’. 

How well has the brand judged consumers’ mood? Extremely well, if our Test Your Ad results are any guide. “Give It Some Boots” is a really strong performer on both our short- and long-term measures, in the top 10% of the general retail category for both, which is exactly what you’d hope from a campaign intended to work as a brand-building platform. 

On the headline Star Rating, which predicts the potential for long-term business growth and effects, “Give It Some Boots” gets a strong 4.4-Star Rating, which puts it in the top 6% of general retail ads. Retail categories tend to be dominated by high-scoring Christmas ads, so for a new brand-building campaign, launched in Autumn, to be performing at this level is a really excellent result for Boots. 

The ad is equally strong on Spike Rating, which predicts short-term sales boosts. The high energy and strong branding means it gets an Exceptional Spike score, in the top 7% for the category. The ad’s early branding is particularly effective – it has an exceptional Fast Fluency score, with 84% of viewers recognising it as a Boots ad within the opening few seconds. 

With Test Your Ad Pro we can drill down to find out what’s driving the positive response – it’s a good, all-round ad with “amused” and “uplifted” particularly powerful Types Of Happiness. Positive verbatim comments note the inclusive casting, the dancing and a general warmth towards the brand (which the ad will only help reinforce). 

That inclusivity might be why it resonates especially well with younger viewers – our demographic breakdown is only indicative, as the sample sizes are small, but it shows that both men and women rate the ad as 4-Stars but that the younger (18-34) audience go all the way to 5-Stars. With younger viewers being typically harder to reach it’s a sign that Boots’ mix of optimism, realism and vibrant imagination is striking exactly the right note this Autumn.