The latest Christmas advert from British retailer M&S is leading the popularity race on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, according to new research.
Communications agency Kindred found that, from a social standpoint, M&S – which doesn’t rank among the top four UK supermarkets in terms of market share – is winning the Christmas TV ad battle.
The company has garnered almost 60 million mentions on micro-blogging site Twitter, while its festive ad has achieved around 160,000 Facebook interactions.
The study also found that John Lewis – which recently reported weekly sales of more than £100 million – has likewise achieved success with its Christmas marketing campaign. The company was found to have been mentioned on Twitter 45.9 million times – a like-for-like increase of more than 16 per cent.
The hashtag for the firm’s widely popular festive television advert – which tells the story of a cartoon bear and hare – has received more than 28,000 Twitter mentions and outperformed M&S’ hashtag, which boasts 3,500 mentions.
John Lewis’ TV and internet marketing drives have been responsible for its growing presence on the web; its online sales, which account for almost a third of its total figure, are reported to be up by 23.7 percent from 2012.
Tesco is also faring well online in the run-up to Christmas, with almost 50 million Twitter mentions on Twitter.
On Facebook, Asda came in second with more than 86,000 interactions and John Lewis third, with around 71,000. It was found that Tesco and Waitrose failed to attract as many interactions as their competitors, with 2,000 and 1,000 respectively.