The first world war-themed Christmas ad from Sainsbury’s has been named the most watched on YouTube last year, followed by John Lewis’ Monty The Penguin and Nike’s Winner Stays footie ad.
Gathering an impressive 16.6 million views, not all of the attention was positive, however, with the supermarket dividing viewers over its use of the first world war’s centenary to promote a grocery shopping.
In total, the top 10 ads earned a combined 330 million views globally – although, by way of comparison, Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake it Off’ video had more than 400 million views in the same year.
Top Ten YouTube ads of 2014, ranked by UK views
1. Sainsbury’s OFFICIAL Christmas 2014 Ad
2. John Lewis Christmas Advert 2014 – #MontyThePenguin
3. Nike Football: Winner Stays. ft. Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., Rooney, Iniesta & more
4. Nike Football: The Last Game ft. Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., Rooney, Zlatan, Iniesta & more
5. Always #LikeAGirl
6. Three – #SingItKitty – cat advert
7. Marks & Spencer Christmas Advert 2014 #FollowTheFairies
8. Most Shocking Second a Day Video
9. Sapeurs – New GUINNESS Advert (2014)
10. Human Loop the Loop with Damien Walters – Pepsi Max. Unbelievable #LiveForNow
“The most popular ideas are those where brands are thinking like publishers, not advertisers,” said Graham Bednash, director of consumer marketing at Google. “They are mashing together the skills of documentary, music video and advertising to create amazing, shareable content.”
Craig Mawdsley, chief strategy officer at AMV BBDO, the creative agency behind the Sainsbury’s ad, added: “YouTube has been crucial in enabling us to generate audiences for the film much more efficiently than in the past.
“In fact, without YouTube, film-making of this ambition would be very hard to justify, as the cost of reaching enough people for a film that takes over three minutes to tell its story would be too great. But the ‘TV-premiere’ strategy, that creates a tailwind of PR and social mentions, ensuring the film is sought out by viewers has served us very well.
“When we showed the film in research groups, a few days after its TV debut one of our respondents summed it up well: ‘Oh, I haven’t seen this on TV yet, but I’ve heard about it, so I was going to watch it on YouTube’.”
