How we put Jersey on the map at Christmas time, with the help of some festive friends

Challenge

Visit Jersey is responsible for promoting an island that is just five miles by nine, located off the coast of France. It promotes the destination year-round, inspiring UK visitors to escape the UK mainland and enjoy everything it has to offer.

 In late 2019, we were asked to deliver a coverage-driving initiative that would flex a more playful personality and put Jersey onto people’s radar during the festive ‘silly season’, to ensure the destination could play a role in popular culture and conversation. Ultimately, we needed to make people smile.

Insight

We discovered that almost 50% of visitors to the island are repeat visitors, meaning there is a large percentage of the British populace that has visited the island in the last 30 years. We spotted an opportunity to leverage the latent association with the Island in a playful way, reminding people why Jersey is so distinct.

Jersey cows are world famous for the richness of their milk, making Jersey the home of world class dairy – from cheese to ice cream. They were the natural heroes for our playful Christmas campaign, if we could identify the festive angle with the most media appeal. 

We undertook social listening to determine the biggest themes with festive conversational currency, discovering the chatter that builds around Christmas jumpers throughout December, with a huge spike around National Christmas Jumper Day. 

Solution

We partnered with a local Jersey cow farmer to reveal the world’s first Jersey Cows in Christmas Jumpers. Little did we know just how much Britain – and the world – needed to see this… 

We enlisted Becky Houzé aka @JerseyCowGirl to be our farmer in crime. A fourth generation Jersey dairy farmer with a growing social following. Becky selected five of her prettiest heifers to be the star of the show, renaming the girls Holly, Noelle, Carole, Mary and Mariah Dairy. With the help of bespoke tailoring outfit Sewn Up, we created 5 made-to-measure festive jumpers… size XXXXXL! 

On a crisp December morning, we filmed a fun promo video on the farm and our photographer shot a gallery of festive images of the cows modelling their Christmas winter warmers, as they munched grass nonchalantly. (Is there any other way to munch grass?) 

Five days ahead of National Christmas Jumper Day, we released our video and imagery to the British media. Whilst we undertook a very thorough media relations strategy, it’s fair to say this is one of those campaigns that went viral (and we don’t use that word lightly!) from the minute we hit send. 

TV coverage hits included segments on Sky News, BBC News & the opening segment on the Jonathan Ross Show. Radio pick-up included Capital, Heart, Classic FM, Magic plus BBC Radio Two. Overall, we delivered over 12 minutes of broadcast coverage dedicated to Jersey Cows in Christmas Jumpers. 

Within the first 24 hours we’d also achieved coverage in The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Sun, The Mirror, The Star, The Times, The Telegraph, The i, The Guardian, The Metro, The Evening Standard, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, LadBible, Yahoo & many more. 

This campaign put smiles on faces and flexed some playfulness in the run up to Christmas. But it also delivered commercially too - visitor exit polls conducted in January 2020 suggested that 1 in 5 had heard about Jersey Cows in Christmas jumpers.