Immersive Shines a Light on Tesco Advert

Yesterday on shots.net, we featured Tesco’s 2014 Christmas ad, Lights On, which includes a dazzling light display created by Immersive – the same company behind the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

The lights magically transformed the supermarket chain’s store in Wigan and a local shopper was invited to flip the switch. Below, Immersive’s creative director John Munro tell us a bit more about the process behind creating the display and what made it so spectacular.

What attracted you to the Tesco project?

The opportunity to create a Christmas comedy stunt like this was really attractive to us as it’s not often that humour is used on a project of this scale. Plus W+K is a really creative company, so we wanted to see what we could produce together.

Tell us a bit more about the light show and how it was created…

It all started from Wieden+Kennedy picking up on a tweet from a Wigan resident mentioning that there was no green hat on their Tesco. W+K's creatives then came up with the concept to create a Christmas visual overload in the style of over-decorated homes that make Christmas such a fun spectacle. This over-the-top light show would be the background to placing the green hat on the Tesco sign.

Immersive was brought in as we work at a highly creative level with animation and installation design, as well as all technical production on site.

We used 13 penguins, 6 Christmas puddings, 8 2D reindeer, 9 3D reindeer, 6 Santa faces, 9 swans, 98 trollies, more the a kilometre of rope light8,  15 Christmas trees and many kilometres of electrical cable to connect it all up.

Why was it felt that a light show should be used in this caign?

The visual concept of the TVC that W+K created with Sonny London [which produced the display] and Guy Manwaring [the advert's director], showed people turning on their turning on their Christmas lights and it culminated with Tesco turning on their lights also. The tongue in cheek concept to go so big was a nod to those folks who really go town with the Christmas spirit, and as Immersive is known for working in large scale lighting and projection projects it was a perfect fit for us!

Have you been involved in any Christmas caigns in the past? If so, how did this compare?

We have done lots of New Year projects, but this one was our first Christmas project, a really nice way for us to bring in this season to our studio.

What were the biggest highlights from working on this project?

The crowd’s reaction was priceless – they really got in to the spirit of the whole thing. The fact that we could create such a stunt on such a large scale was a real pleasure. It was also really nice to see the original Tweeter's reaction to what we had created for her.

And what were the biggest challenges?

We often work on huge scales to short deadlines and live audiences, so this project came with the usual set of challenges that we often come across and are used to. But a new and surprising challenge for us was to take our high-end 3D animation team and get them to think in terms of 2/3 frame animations and creating very minimal looking animated Christmas decorations. We kept having to pull back our ideas and styles to make them fit in with the aesthetic. It’s funny how creating a simple look and feel can often be quite challenging!

Do you think supermarkets are upping their game when it comes to their festive caigns?

We were working in New York for a few months this year and got caught up in the whirlwind of Super Bowl adverts. It seems like the UK has always had the same kind of passion for its Christmas caigns, which is nice!

Check out a video of the uncut display above and a behind the scenes video below.