wEsT LiFe jOinS wOoLiEs FoR ChRisTmAs

Woolworths is ploughing £25m into its Christmas advertising campaign, which includes a TV commercial featuring Irish boyband Westlife.

The campaign, which launches tonight, is the largest the retailer has invested in a Christmas campaign in five years and represents a 500% increase in online marketing spend.

The first of six television commercials, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, will break during Emmerdale on ITV1.

The boyband will appear alongside Woolworths characters Wooly the sheep and Worth the sheepdog.

The song White Christmas, sung by Westlife in the ad, is being released as an exclusive download through Woolworths' digital music service for 59p.

The six commercials include a 50 second 'brand' ad, two 30-second 'offer' ads and three 20-second 'tactical' deal ads.

The campaign is also promoting Woolworths' newly launched Argos-style catalogue called the Big Red Book.

"It is a return to the Woolworths' advertising of old, which customers fondly remember as capturing the excitement of Christmas," said Stephen Robertson, the marketing director at Woolworths.

"But we've brought it bang up to date and made it relevant to Woolworths today with messages like online shopping, in-store ordering and tactical deals."

My views on this are that Woolworths have kind of fell behind over these few years and other competitors have been taken most of their customers. I feel that Westlife will imporve their profits and help reach their targets. Westlife are alongside the mascot for Woolworths the "sheep", where Westlife mainly target a young audience which will appeal to them more because of christmas and children. The slot in which they have chosen is good because it comes between a popular prgramme, Coronation street, which many people watch.