Though it had invented the experience gifting market, Red Letter Days ways coming under increased pressure from an explosion in low cost competitors that were available from almost any high street store. What had once been special was becoming devalued and commodified. As a premium offering, this was putting Red Letter Days under pressure and threatening to undermine sales in their key Christmas period.
There is a risk with any gift: will the person you are buying for appreciate it? This can be compounded with experience gifts, given they are so unusual. Which is why for gift givers nothing is better than hearing someone say ‘thank you’.
Rather than stick with the industry norm of just showing ‘stock film’ experiences, we took ownership of the emotional high ground for the person who really matters: the gift giver. We dramatised how Red Letter Days is guaranteed to give them something back: the emotional reward of a ‘thank you’ that shows their present is appreciated, important confirmation when the gift choice is something both unexpected and expensive.
Despite only limited spend, and two weeks on air, saying ‘thank you’ delivered incremental Christmas sales of over £500k, breaking even in the short-term. This was enough to persuade even hardnosed Dragons Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis to invest more cash. Over the following 18 months the commercial ran another 2 times, with a combined return of 6 times the original investment.