Not On The High Street is putting 120 per cent more into TV and video on demand, with films starring its own makers running from 1 October to mid-December.
Not On The High Street is putting 120 per cent more money into TV and video on demand this year, and its autumn and Christmas campaign starts its main run today. The two films, a 30-second autumn spot and a 45-second Christmas ad, drop the gifting clichés and show the small makers who sell through the marketplace, with consecutive bursts running from October to mid-December, as Retail Gazette reported.
The autumn film features three of the platform’s sellers at work: the ceramicist Kate Brigden, the jewellery brand Posh Totty Designs and the artist behind This Is Nessie. The Christmas spot adds MijMoj, a Welsh business making bespoke wooden pieces. Detail Films produced them, with Will Warr and Benji Jackson directing, and they run across video on demand, YouTube and social as well as TV.
Rachel Wells, vice-president of brand and experience, said the brand wanted to “return to the heart of what makes Not On The High Street so special”, which she described as the real people behind every product. The films are the first big campaign since the marketplace turned 20 this spring.
Doubling a TV budget is a statement in a year when most challenger retailers are cutting back to performance channels. Not On The High Street’s problem is not awareness, it is that Amazon and Etsy both sell personalised gifts too, and the only thing it has that they do not is its makers. Putting them in the ads is the one claim a rival cannot copy.
Starting on 1 October is also a bet on the calendar. Christmas gifting now begins in autumn, pulled forward by events like Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days next week, and the brands that are remembered in December are the ones that were seen in October. For the benchmark every Christmas gifting ad is measured against, see every John Lewis Christmas advert ranked.
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