Which? exposes shady festive deals in Christmas blitz

Which? is aiming to tap into the festive fervour to fight against the unfair treatment of consumers and helping people to buy for Christmas with confidence with the launch of a new advertising and marketing blitz.

The new campaign, developed by creative agency Neverland with media partners Goodstuff, Brainlabs and Digital Voices, will highlight the key consumer issues people should look out for over the Christmas period, from dodgy Black Friday deals, rubbish customer service, to “shrinkflation” and “skimpflation” on festive food, drink and gift shopping.

It aims to highlight Which?’s wider role and relevance in the world as a not-for-profit consumer champion and how it is helping consumers to make informed choices during the most high-stakes shopping season of the year.

Although perhaps best known for its reviews and magazine, Which? wants to show consumers it helps to empower them in other ways, too – by investigating, exposing and campaigning against consumer harm and asking the tough questions no one else does.

Running for four weeks with a £1.1m spend, the campaign aims to reach audiences through activity across OOH, digital, radio, relevant podcasts, as well as creator-led content from influencers Hayley Morris and the Ayodi family.

The OOH activity will feature high impact contextual advertising at key national train stations and shopping centres to ensure consumers see these critical messages when and where they need them most.

The activity precedes a media partnership with Channel 4 around key Christmas programming in December – extending to popular food, home improvement and travel programming in the new year, when these purchases top the shopping lists of many households.

This campaign follows Which?’s brand refresh last year that highlighted its consumer-focused mission beyond reviews by demonstrating the breadth of free, trust-worthy advice and relevance for today’s biggest buying decisions.

Which? head of brand Kat Chinnock said: “Christmas is a busy and challenging time for a lot of people. On top of this, we’re getting ripped off right, left and centre with worsening products and services for our money – from down-sized Christmas chocolates, to unreliable deliveries to dodgy online marketplaces not sending what they advertised.

“At Which?, we want to expose these poor practices – that our teams are busy investigating and lobbying against behind the scenes – while also providing people with a way of avoiding all the pitfalls so they can enjoy a more confident holiday season.”