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A celebration of family-focused fun: how to win at Tesco this springtime
Who says there’s nothing to look forward to in January? As explained in our recent post looking at Twixmas and beyond, the next few weeks have plenty of seasonal moments for brands to tap into—from Veganuary and Dry January, all the way through to Lunar New Year. With the right approach, the “post-Christmas lull” can end up being anything but.
What if January’s mini moments aren’t quite right for your brand, though? Well, the good news is that it’s not long before a whole new series of celebrations begins. With Valentine’s Day kicking things off in early February, it’s not long before attention begins to turn to events like Mother’s Day and Easter.
Two things specifically make these events super relevant to consumer brands. Firstly, they have a great deal in common. Gifting, special mealtimes, treats, and time with loved ones all tend to feature heavily on people’s agendas in the first quarter of the year. Spring may be blooming, but the focus is still very heavily on comfort activities.
Secondly, there’s the fact that—for most—these celebrations will also be taking place at home. According to one recent research study, around 60% of Brits now prefer to be at home for both Valentine’s and Mother’s Day1. That only serves to heighten the importance of retail media to brands, with millions of shoppers actively looking for ways to make their at-home festivities that bit more special.
Welcoming millions of customers every week both online and in-store, Tesco is a key retail destination that can support shoppers on their springtime missions. With that in mind, let’s look at two of early 2025’s biggest events—and find out exactly what’s in store for brands at Tesco this Mother’s Day and Easter.
Mother’s Day: 30th March 2025.
While it might focus on one person in particular, Mother’s Day is important for the family as a whole. 70% of mums say that spending time with their children is how they want to celebrate the day2, making it the first major opportunity post-Christmas for everyone to come together and spend time with one another. Naturally, that also tends create a boost in spending, too. In fact, £1.6 billion was spent on Mother’s Day in the UK alone in 20243.
For brands, that presents a gigantic commercial opportunity—particularly within certain categories. Shopping missions around this time of year tend to be heavily focused on family festivities, with meals, cakes and desserts, baking, wine, and tea and biscuits all dominating the agenda. Gifts play a key role, too, from flowers and plants through to products created specifically for Mother’s Day.
Naturally, Tesco can play a critical role here—particularly when it comes to reach. 75% of British mums, and 69% of all adults that purchase Mother’s Day gifts, are Tesco Clubcard holders. Within that latter audience, 25–54-year-olds are those most likely to make a purchase, with women (54%) tending to be more thoughtful than men (43%) when it comes to buying presents.
As is the case with other key seasonal events, at Tesco we create targeted audience segments around Mother’s Day—and 2025 is no different. Our Mother’s Day audiences for this year are:
Tesco makes it easy to engage with these shopper segments, too. Across Onsite Display Advertising, Sponsored Products, Food Content Partnerships, and Offsite Display Advertising (including Meta and Pinterest), it’s possible to reach an audience of millions. Point of Sale alone can reach more than 3.4m Thoughtful Bakers, for instance.
Easter: 20th April 2025.
Easter comes relatively late in 2025, falling towards the end of the date range (the latest that Easter can be is April 25th). And, compared to Mother’s Day, the focus here is more squarely on food—a fact that goes some way to explaining the huge £1.8 billion that the UK spent on Easter groceries in 2024. Per person, that breaks down to almost £240 a head.
Again, Tesco provides a great channel through which to reach those shoppers, Easter gifters in particular. 68% of adults who say they buy presents for Easter own a Tesco Clubcard. And when we say “gifts”, of course, one specific product tends to dominate. Twice as many packs of Easter Eggs (or similar) were bought than actual eggs were in Tesco stores in 2024. In total, 11 million shoppers bought an average of 6.5 confectionery products across 2.5 individual trips.
Easter buyers start early, too. Just as we typically see hundreds of thousands of packs of mince pies sold by early September, more than a third of all Easter confectionery sold at Tesco was added to baskets by the end of February. In terms of campaign planning—and despite the later date for 2025—March continues to be the Easter peak, with Tesco stores attracting over 200 million visits during that month in 2024.
It's not all about chocolate, of course. With more than half (57%) of Tesco customers agreeing that Easter weekend is one to spend with family, there are huge opportunities in areas like cakes and desserts, roasts, meat-free, condiments and sauces, and baking, too.
Like Mother’s Day, we’ve created dedicated audiences for Easter 2025:
Reaching your audiences: map those shopper segmentations to digital channels.
If you’re keen to make a splash at Tesco in early 2025 but are still working on your plans (or haven’t started yet), then our wide range of digital channels should be your priority. As well as offering a huge variety of different formats and placements available, the audiences detailed above can be overlayed on each—giving brands the chance to reach key segments when they’re already searching for seasonal inspiration.
A few channels warrant a specific mention here:
- Tesco Food Content Partnerships, which serve up quick, easy, and tasty recipes to customers via Tesco.com. Food Content Partnerships are a great way to inspire shoppers with new and clever uses for your products, be that a unique twist on an existing recipe, or a brand new one entirely.
- Tesco Whoosh, our rapid delivery service that aims to get groceries from store to door in 60 minutes or less. Whoosh orders are placed on Tesco.com, meaning that brands have access to powerful ad placements like Sponsored Products and Zones. The number of active Whoosh customers has grown by almost 20% in the past half-year4, making it a great way to reach shoppers on the hunt for those last-minute spring essentials.
- Scan as you Shop, our easy-to-use mobile barcode scanners that also display ads to shoppers. With splash ads that pop up at the start of the shop and banner ads that appear throughout, Scan as you Shop is a great way to inspire shoppers as they browse the aisles.
- Connected Displays, which brings the digital screen experience in-store. Clusters of screens are positioned in high-visibility areas, giving brands the opportunity to deliver engaging, dynamic content into the store environment. Connected Display is perfect for recreating above the line (ATL) campaigns in-store, for instance.
- Event Zone Stamp & Buy List, which give brands an exclusive and fully branded product stamp at the top of an online Event Zone page, as well as a dedicated brand buylist— where shoppers can effortlessly explore the brand's entire range through product-specific thumbnails.
- Relevant Sponsored Search, which shows ads natively in the top three positions when customers search for a generic or competing brand. Advanced data science ensures relevance for shoppers and brands alike.
- Offsite Targeted Display gives brands the opportunity to reach highly relevant audiences and deliver impactful advertising as customers browse their favourite websites an social media.
To find out more about how to maximise the family-focused festivities kicking off this spring, speak to your regular Tesco Media contact or get in touch. Got your springtime plans sorted? Stay tuned… we’ll have more great content on upcoming seasonal events soon.
1 TGI Audience Profiling & Targeting
2 Clifton, Market. (2024) ‘What do British mums want for Mother’s Day’. YouGov. 27th Feb 2024
3 Viberg, Emily. (2024) ‘UK Mother’s Day Market Report’. Mintel
4 Tesco. (2024) ‘Interim Results 2024/24’. Tesco plc. 3rd October 2024
