Selfridges – Christmas of Dreams

The challenge

For Christmas 2021, Selfridges created a campaign called ‘Christmas of Dreams’ to draw customers into their store which had been figuratively transformed into a surreal, enchanted wonderland with a celebratory atmosphere.

The tone of the campaign was big, sparkly, all-round joyful and electric fun, pulling from the language and iconography of golden age Hollywood and musical theatre. An advert for the campaign was fittingly created, in which a festive variety show took place.

The advert centred around a game contestant, dressed up as a Christmas tree, who struggled yet succeeded to find the right gifts for everyone in time. Selfridges wanted an AR experience based on this advert to reinforce their campaign and its message.

Our approach

We created an AR face filter available at Selfridges’ Instagram account, @theofficialselfridges.

Upon opening the experience, the user’s screen presented their face behind theatrical curtains along with the words ‘Selfridges’ Christmas of Dreams’. The user could then tap the screen to open the curtains, revealing themselves to be dressed up in the same Christmas tree costume seen in the advert.

The user was then asked to shake their head with the call-to-action ‘Shake your head’, making the costume shake as snowflakes and stars fell and swirled around them.

Finally, the user was asked to ‘Say something’ which they could do whilst pressing and holding down the record button. Releasing the record button played a video of the user speaking but in a higher pitch than before.

Outcomes

Following the release of the experience on Instagram, Selfridges staged an in-store activation encouraging shoppers to access the face filter.

According to Spark AR, the Instagram face filter had been viewed over 50,000 after a month – a strong performance for a seasonal branded AR experience.

This highlights the importance of an overarching campaign to support the face filter, which also included advertising spend and partnering with a certified Spark AR creator who was able to target the project to the creator community.

Click or scan this QR code with your phone to try it out: