TBWA\London is On the Hunt in New Lidl Easter Campaign

Lidl unveiled its 2016 Easter TV ad campaign last night during the first break of ITV’s brand new period drama Doctor Thorne. Designed to highlight its full range of delicious, great quality and low-priced products, the campaign encourages families to choose Lidl for their entire Easter weekend shop.

Lidl’s Easter campaign, created by TBWA\London and directed by Jim Gilchrist at Outsider, is a return to the Lidl heartland of surprises. Comprising two creatives, the TV ads centre around school children eagerly surprising their busy and unsuspecting parents when they come to collect them.

Using a real teacher, a real classroom, and real Lidl food, the ads see the children excitedly organise an Easter egg hunt for their parents and cook a delectable meal of fresh roast lamb or Scottish salmon with all the trimmings – conveying the ‘surprises with truth’ message, which runs across the entire Lidl Surprises campaign.

To bolster the campaign, Lidl is encouraging families to participate via a series of short videos created by Cubaka especially for Lidl's social channels. In each video, children are asked a question about Easter and their spontaneous responses are captured, encouraging the public to share their children's 'pearls of wisdom' for the duration of the Easter campaign.

The latest integrated campaign encompasses TV, press, OOH, POS, digital, radio and social. It follows the success of Lidl’s Christmas campaign, also created by TBWA, which delivered strong bottom-line results and was recognised as the ‘most-likely-to-make-you-buy’ amongst the festive supermarket ads by market research firm Millward Brown.

The TV campaign launched at 9.15pm during the first ad break of Doctor Thorne, ITV’s brand new period drama based on the novel by Anthony Trollope, and written by Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey. The second spot was on Channel 4 at 9.25pm during the network premiere of David O’Russell’s multi-Oscar nominated American Hustle.

Claire Farrant, advertising and marketing director, Lidl UK, said: “Family and treating your loved ones remain at the heart of our latest campaign, and we wanted to underline Lidl’s role as the go-to supermarket for the weekly shop and for special occasions. Our Easter campaign this year perfectly captures the authentic reactions from real life parents and children as they celebrate this occasion with the great range we offer at Lidl, highlighting our high quality & provenance at low prices.”

Richard Stainer, CEO, TBWA, said: “This Easter continues the hugely successful Lidl Surprises campaign, showcasing Lidl's great quality food at amazingly low prices. This time we enlisted a class full of eager children from Princess Frederica School in London to surprise their parents with Lidl's delicious Easter fare. Needless to say things got messy but the results were delicious. A big thank you to all staff, children and parents. It was A+ for effort all round.”