Fairytale Fun Gives Boots a Christmas Hit

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Boots this year have brought us a stuffed Christmas stocking of a festive ad, full of gifts, jokes, cultural references, glamour and fairytale magic. There’s a huge amount going on in the ad, from WPP’s dedicated Boots team at The Pharm. But it’s all grounded in an idea so fun and simple it’s a wonder they’ve never tried it before – base a Boots ad on panto favourite Puss In Boots.

The ad follows our furry hero – whose movements are modelled on a real life Maine Coon moggy – as he asks a magic mirror for gifting advice. Go to Boots, the mirror tells him, and he sets off on a sometimes perilous trek from the land of fairytale to a real life store. Assistants help him pick the perfect gifts for his fairy story friends and finally he presents a gift to the Snow Queen while Duran Duran’s 80s hit “Girls On Film” plays. Along the way there are jokes – like a poor jester who’s found himself in the stocks – references to classic fairytales and over 50 branded gift ranges available in Boots.

We ran the Boots ad through our Test Your Ad platform to see what real viewers felt about the fairytale feline. Test Your Ad offers predictions of long-term brand-building effectiveness (Star Rating) as well as of short-term sales boosts (Spike Rating), and it includes the Brand Fluency metric to measure how quickly and accurately people understand the brand the ad’s for.

The great news for Boots is that Puss In Boots scores Exceptional rankings in both Star Rating and Spike Rating. These aren’t just excellent results by the standards of retail ads, they also beat the norm in the much more competitive sphere of this year’s Christmas ads.

Christmas ads have a well-earned reputation for making an emotional impact and are the best work of the year for most retail brands. The average Star Rating this year so far is a very impressive 4.5-Stars, but Boots’ 5.2-Stars handily beats that. It’s also above the Christmas norm in Spike Rating. In other words, Puss’ visit to Boots is in contention with the very best of this year’s festive ads.

Let’s make a deeper dive into what exactly works so well about it. In his must-read Look Out, Orlando Wood talks about “Character-Incident-Place” as a crucial framework for an effective ad. A strong character, in a recognisable or evocative place, with a clear storyline. It’s clear that this Boots ad ticks all three boxes. We can all recognise the magical land of fairy stories from movies and books, and Puss’ quest for gifts gives him a straightforward mission and narrative.

But the most important and successful element of this ad is Puss In Boots himself – wonderfully animated and realised by the team behind the ad. Christmas ads in the UK have been transformed by the introduction of regular, recognisable characters, and with Puss, Boots have a ready-made opportunity to adopt one of their own. Will we see him in more Christmas ads? It’s up to Boots and The Pharm, but this first appearance shows that this character and brand could be a purr-fect match.