Beam Case Study .

This Christmas saw Marks & Spencer create their very own in-house festive campaign. Beam has worked with M&S from 2017, through their previous creative agency, Grey London. After establishing a long-term relationship with the brand, bringing creative in-house came with various challenges, including the requirement for broadcast affairs support.

Beam worked with the core team within M&S on their festive campaign in September 2021. We were presented with a pitch deck introducing us to the concept of bringing Percy Pig to life. The idea consisted of eight adverts highlighting key festive products, including their brand-new light-up gin with sparkling gold flakes.

The original concept included Percy being mesmerised by the bottle of sparkling gin. Beam’s broadcast-affairs team has over 60 years’ agency experience in clearing and trafficking commercials for UK broadcast. Mar Soler, who looks after M&S broadcast-affairs in the Beam team, raised the issue that Percy is a childlike character, and therefore is likely to appeal to children. This causes issues with the following BCAP code rule:

19.15.2 – include a person or character whose example is likely to be followed by those aged under 18 years or who has a strong appeal to those aged under 18.

Beam worked with M&S and Clearcast representative Seb Lynch on the concept to make sure it was acceptable for TV broadcast. After several months of work, the adverts ran, with voice-overs from Dawn French and Tom Holland, and were hugely popular with audiences worldwide.

Percy’s First Christmas was not only awarded with a Campaign ‘Pick of the Week’, but also made the top 10 most effective Christmas ads of 2021.

“I was delighted to have worked so closely with the M&S team on their Christmas advert for 2021. We had some huge challenges ahead, but we were able to stick as closely to their original concept as we could.

Even though in-house M&S had some great production and creative talent, Beam was able to step in and support them where they needed the wider agency infrastructure. We really look forward to continuing our relationship with M&S and the upcoming second series of Cooking With The Stars.” – Mar Soler