Create Sainsbury’s Christmas campaign, celebrating its 150th year.

To mark Sainsbury’s 150th anniversary at the most special time of year, we told the true-ish story of the retailer’s first store and how crossing paths with a young chimney sweep changed the course of Christmas forever.

This isn’t your regular heritage campaign though, it’s a Dickensian epic in which Mr and Mrs Sainsbury cross paths with a young chimney sweep by the name of Nick, who is destined for greatness.

Sainsbury’s produced a full-scale cinematic family romp filled with injustice, heartbreak, a sprinkle of magic and a dusting of nonsense to get everyone into the Christmas spirit.

After all, little things like truth and facts should never get in the way of a good story.

The film forms part of the brand’s 150^th birthday celebrations, with ‘Helping make Christmas, Christmas since 1869’ sitting at the heart of the Sainsbury’s marketing campaign. Additional food and drink TV, radio, print, digital, social and OOH advertising will run alongside the TVC until Christmas.

The campaign was also launched with a special Metro wrap, taking readers back to 1869.

Nicholas The Sweep was the second most popular Christmas ad on YouTube. The Ads Leaderboard is a measure of the most “engaging” ads on the platform and is determined by an algorithm that factors in watch time, organic views and audience retention.

The campaign also helped drive sales of oranges, with customers buying more than 34 million easy peelers partly thanks to the fruit’s inclusion in the film.

Overall, grocery sales edged up by 0.4% and online sales grew 5%.