Win a £149 Hamper in Time for Christmas

Campaign Overview

Whittard of Chelsea is a British tea, coffee and hot chocolate brand with more than 75 tea blends in its range. At the end of November 2022 it ran a Christmas competition on christmascompetition.whittard.co.uk under the headline "WIN a £149 Hamper in time for Christmas!" The page was short and direct: a headline, an "Enter now" prompt, the prize list and the Blitz Rocket ladder of enter, share, complete tasks, collect points, win.

The competition ran from November 28 to December 5, 2022. 42,209 people signed up and 23,100 of them confirmed their email, and the page recorded 468,848 page views in eight days. Entrants completed 32,771 bonus actions, almost half of them visits to the Whittard website.

It is the largest of ten campaigns Whittard has run on the domain, a series that also includes an Afternoon Tea Week competition, a Sandals Resorts trip to Jamaica for International Coffee Day, and partner collaborations with Dualit, Bosch, L'Occitane, My Christmas Pyjamas and Jessie Bakes Cakes.

Campaign Strategy

The prize was the product. Instead of cash or a third-party gadget, the winner received Whittard's own All-Singing, All-Dancing Hamper: Chelsea Breakfast and Earl Grey loose tea, House Blend ground coffee, luxury milk and white hot chocolates, biscuits, marshmallows, chocolate espresso beans and chocolate spoons, plus a Greenwich teapot and a bottle of Furleigh Estate Classic Cuvée Brut. A hamper is a familiar Christmas gift, so the prize matched what the audience was already thinking about in late November, and every item in it doubled as a product showcase. Five runners-up each received a Cocoa Creation Hot Chocolate Gift Set, which gave entrants more than one prize to aim for.

Entry took an email address, and confirming it added 10 points. From there, entrants could earn more:

• Website: visit the Whittard website (200 pts).
• Social follows: follow on Instagram, follow on TikTok and like the Facebook page (50 pts each).
• Referrals: 100 points for every friend who entered.

The weighting is the key design choice. The single most valuable action sent entrants to whittard.co.uk, and it was worth more than all three social follows combined. The full action list added up to 350 points, so the path from entry to finished was short and easy to see.

Viral Mechanics & Growth Engine

Referrals were the open-ended lever. At 100 points each, one referred friend was worth twice a social follow, and once the four one-time actions were done, referrals were the only way left to add points.

The point values shaped what entrants did. The website visit was completed 15,992 times, more than twice as often as any other action. Instagram follows came next with 6,609, then Facebook page likes with 6,019 and TikTok follows with 4,151, for 16,779 social follows across the three platforms. In total, entrants completed 32,771 bonus actions.

There were no points milestones or instant unlocks. The rewards were the hamper and the five runner-up gift sets, and points counted toward them, which kept the message simple: enter, do the tasks, share the link.

Results & Impact

• 42,209 sign-ups, of which 23,100 confirmed their email (55%).
• 468,848 page views in eight days, about 11 for every sign-up.
• 32,771 bonus actions completed, led by 15,992 website visits.
• 16,779 social follows: 6,609 on Instagram, 6,019 on Facebook and 4,151 on TikTok.
• Ten campaigns on the domain with 100+ sign-ups each: 89,904 confirmed entrants across the seven that required email confirmation, plus 18,738 sign-ups across the three that did not.

The comparison with Whittard's August 2022 Afternoon Tea competition is the telling one. That campaign used the same four actions and point values and offered a prize worth over £600; it collected 22,247 confirmed entrants. The £149 Christmas hamper, with a seasonal hook and a one-week deadline, collected slightly more.

Why This Strategy Works

A prize's pull comes from relevance as much as price. In the last week of November, a hamper of tea, coffee and hot chocolate is something people are already planning to buy or give, and the headline promised it would arrive in time. That relevance, plus a deadline only eight days away, is why a £149 prize could match a £600 one from the same brand and the same audience.

The point weighting did the second job. By making the website visit the most valuable action, Whittard turned a giveaway page into a traffic source for its own shop at the start of the Christmas shopping season, and the social follows came along at a lower price. For any gift-led retailer or food and drink brand heading into the fourth quarter, this is the template to copy: your own product as the prize, a short seasonal window, and the most points for a visit to your store.

Key Takeaways

1. Make your own product the prize. The hamper was built from Whittard's range, so every entrant saw what the brand sells.
2. Tie the prize to the season. A £149 hamper "in time for Christmas" matched a £600 summer prize on entrants.
3. Pay the most for the action that matters most. A website visit was worth 200 points and was completed 15,992 times.
4. Add runner-up prizes. Five hot chocolate gift sets gave entrants more than one way to win.
5. Keep the task list short. Four actions worth 350 points and a referral link made the path from entry to finished obvious.
6. Reuse a template that works. Whittard ran the same action set on its summer and Christmas 2022 campaigns and changed only the prize and the moment.