John Lewis
As Senior Copywriting Manager in the Creative & Content team, I was responsible for building and leading the 8-strong brand copywriting team of Partners and pool of contractors.
My role was to sharpen and modernise how the brand sounded, without losing the warmth customers trust.
Alongside rolling out the new tone of voice (‘joyfully bold’), I oversaw all the most high-profile content across all channels and touchpoints, including the in-store and online Christmas campaigns, seasonal events, and My John Lewis loyalty scheme refresh.
Although not in my remit, I also helped to dramatically improve processes, creating greater efficiencies and being the central anchor between the copy and design teams, and particularly the marketing and CRM teams.
Tone of voice
John Lewis is one of the most familiar and loved brands in the UK, which makes any shift in tone a strategic risk and opportunity.
My biggest success was leading the very successful rollout of our ‘joyfully bold’ tone of voice, with workshops across the business.
These 2-hour workshops received overwhelming excellent feedback, leaving participants feeling confident and empowered, and averaging 4.85 (out of 5) for both usefulness and enjoyment.
The My John Lewis loyalty scheme
During my 3 years at John Lewis, the strapline was changed from ‘Never knowingly undersold’ to ‘for all life’s moments’. We wanted to rebrand the loyalty scheme, so it made sense to bring that strapline change into the main hero copy for that too, giving extra traction and enhancing brand equity.
Christmas campaign
People up and down the nation regarding the John Lewis Christmas ad as the gateway to Christmas. While Adam & Eve looked after our ATL Christmas campaign, I was privileged to lead the Christmas campaign from a copy and content point of view – again tying in with our new strapline. Happier Christmas Moments also reflected the mood of the nation, given that the previous few years had been shackled by Covid restrictions.
Also, Santa’s Grotto appeared in many of our stores, so experiential copy was needed for these – from wall POS to envelopes for the letters children wrote to Santa.
Campaigns and always-on
Black Friday is one of the biggest trade points of the year, with customers not just hunting down deals for themselves but stocking up on presents just before Christmas. But as copy lead for this campaign, I was keen that the copy reflected our desire not to jump onto the consumerism bandwagon – instead preferring to focus on our sustainability credentials as well (such as the market-leading 5-year guarantees on our TVs).
We then tied this in with one of our recycle schemes, TechCycle (the other two being FashionCycle and BeautyCycle), where customers can bring in their old tech and we’d recycle it for free. We also applied this to the buy journey online. The eye-catching wordplay provided extra standout.
Packaging
With our tone of voice undergoing a refresh to be more ‘joyfully bold’, it was important to make this shift across all touchpoints, and that included the redesign of our delivery packaging.
A new line was needed for the revelatory moment when the customer opens the box – be it a garlic press or a TV. I pitched just one word: Ta-da!
I also made sure the TOV reached the small print on our delivery bags too.
