Grey London and Marks & Spencer Launch Chatbot to Help Us Create The Perfect Christmas

Grey London has developed Marks & Spencer’s first bot for Messenger: The Marks & Spencer Christmas Concierge.

The service, which sits inside Facebook Messenger, offers customers inspiration to help them plan their perfect Christmas. Users can opt-in to receive daily tips on food, hosting and presents. They can also browse and shop from a series of specially curated festive menus – ranging from providing for intimate gatherings to a full-blown Christmas feast.

There are also some festive ‘Easter Eggs’ (hidden messages), including a Percy pig cameo and jokes worthy of a Christmas cracker.

Grey London developed the service after entering the Facebook Creative Shop Christmas Hackathon. The competition celebrates new work that pushes the boundaries of innovative brand experiences on Facebook’s family of apps and services.

Agencies around the world were challenged to submit ideas that used Messenger in an innovative way in the lead up to Christmas. Grey London submitted two top line ideas and were the only UK agency among five shortlisted by Facebook.

They won the opportunity to travel to New York to get face-to-face feedback from a panel of executives including VP of Messenger David Marcus and CCO of Facebook’s Creative Shop Mark D’Arcy. The team was also given access to Facebook engineers to help bring the concept to life, plus media spend behind the project.  

Vicki Maguire, Joint Chief Creative Officer at Grey London, said: “The thought of going on Messenger and ordering your Christmas dinner was an idea we just had to explore. Our mission has always been to create Marks & Spencer’s most personalised Christmas campaign ever. This bot allows us to reach customers in a truly innovative way, with the perfect blend of personality and functionality.”

Megan Conneely, Head of Social at Marks & Spencer, said: “At M&S we put the customer at the heart of everything we do and we’re excited to be working with Grey London to launch a product that will help provide inspiration for the most important meal of the year – Christmas dinner. The M&S Christmas Concierge is an exciting new product on a channel that our customers are increasingly using to interact with us and we can’t wait to hear their feedback.”

Eric Oldrin, Head of Emerging Platforms at Facebook, said: “We were thrilled with the results, including the work from the amazing team at Grey London who created the Marks & Spencer Christmas Concierge, laying the groundwork for a powerful conversational commerce experience on Messenger.”

The Marks & Spencer Christmas Concierge is available for UK customers from November 28th until December 24th – with shoppers able to order food until the 14th December.