The Brief

Asda is one of just a few household brands whose Christmas ads are awaited with feverish excitement. So it goes without saying that the festive period is massive for Asda. And in 2024, after the huge highs of Elf and Buble, we all knew we’d need to go big or go gnome…

Asda’s 2024 Christmas ad was of course all about the Gnome of Christmas. Built on the popularity of Asda’s gnome ranges, the ad saw an army of garden gnomes (led by Max, Gnorma, Gnibbles, Gnicky and Gnarla) come to the rescue and help two snowed-in Asda colleagues get their store ready for Christmas.

To help make Asda’s Gnome of Christmas more famous than any other supermarket campaign, we rolled out a trio of integrated PR, Experience and Social ideas, underpinned by an insatiable product press office.

The Big Idea

First up was the Asda Gnome of Christmas Market. A traditional German-style Christmas market with one big-little difference. All of the market stalls were tiny… but staffed by regular people. Equal parts adorable, magical and humorous, the pint-sized market stalls were opened on London’s Southbank for two days, serving up thousands of samples from Asda’s Christmas range to delighted passersby.

Our middle act turned attention to Asda’s longstanding and heartwarming community work, in particular its efforts to combat loneliness among its elderly customers. Under the mantra ‘Don’t Be Gnome Alone This Christmas’ we worked with Asda to launch a £1 meal deal over elderly folk, while also bringing in TV’s Larry Lamb to encourage over 60s join others for a chat at Asda cafes across the country.

The curtain closer saw us create a fleet of world’s smallest supermarket delivery vans and then tour them around the whole country. Our tiny vans were replicas of normal Asda vans, just 10 times smaller, with just enough room in the back for a small Asda Christmas shop. With each van ‘driven’ by one of Asda’s hero gnomes, we made free Gnome Deliveries to over 200 lucky households in London, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.