After a successful year working with CEWE Photoworld and broadening their PR activity, we performed an analysis of the Christmas market ahead of their busiest gifting season. Our insight was that mums weren’t making Photobooks due to a lack of time. We also knew that they’re not reading weekly magazines and papers anymore.

To tackle this problem we launched the CEWE #SantaService campaign, allowing shoppers to hand over their photos to CEWE designers, taking the leg-work out of the Photobook process. We had to think outside of traditional media in order to spread the message, we announced the campaign via Instagram, a platform that has huge reach with parents.

Targeting our core audience of mums as gifters, we thought what better way to engage parents then to harness the power of peer-to-peer recommendation using Insta-parents? Working with 8 targeted ‘Insta-parents’, we created a month’s worth of content, following their journey through the process.

Working with the likes of Peckham Mumma, Ginger Mum, London Dad and Tiger Lily Quinn, the social campaign boomed. In total reached over 191,900 Instagram users who generated massive traffic to the Secret Santa Service page alone. Also, during the two week social activity period our campaign grew CEWE’s Instagram channel by 185%.

To spread the word we also built a news research story looking at Christmas shopping habits, hitting target media running in print from The Mirror to The Scottish Sun to online outlets from Yahoo to Belfast Telegraph. With ¼ of mums listing a personalised Christmas gesture at the top of their wish lists, we put our orders in early!