Aldi has emerged as the most effective advertiser on Instagram in the run-up to Christmas, beating favourites John Lewis, Marks and Spencer and Coca Cola, in terms of engagement and follower growth, with Asda losing followers during the festive period.

The results are based on an analysis by Hopper HQ, an automated Instagram scheduling tool. The data showed that the most liked Christmas post was a pug in a festive dress, regrammed by H&M, which received more than 320,000 likes and 4,100 comments. However, Aldi experienced the most engagement and follower growth with its Mosaic Christmas campaign. Asda was the only brand to lose followers.

The analysis was carried out between 4 and 18 December on 15 of the UK’s top consumer brands, using Hopper HQs new Instagram analytics tool which will launches next month.

The top five brands, with engagement rate and follower growth rates in brackets, respectively, were as follows:

Aldi (5.54 per cent, 1.94 per cent); John Lewis (3.92 per cent, 0.84 per cent); Heathrow Airport (2.86 per cent, 0.79 per cent); Marks & Spencer (2.73 per cent, 0.65 per cent); and Debenhams (2.32 per cent, 0.76 per cent).

“The results of our research and analysis are surprising,” said Hopper HQ co-founder Mike Bandar. “We fully expected brands that are known for their Christmas marketing campaigns, like John Lewis and Marks and Spencer, to come out on top. I think what the results do show is that just because a brand invests heavily in a Christmas campaign, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be communicated and executed well over all marketing platforms.

“What we can take away from this research is that it’s not as simple as creating an emotive advert. Campaigns must be tailored depending on the platform and knowing your audience and how to interact with them is key. Although Aldi may be a surprise winner, when looking at their account it’s clear why they’ve won. They’ve taken a novel ‘mosaic layout’ approach to their account, really utilising the platform’s different views, whilst incorporating their offline and in store campaign with carrot characters. A worthy and a great use of best practice.”

There’s a full breakdown of the data here. 

Hopper HQ claims to be the world’s only fully automated Instagram scheduling service with clients in over 70 countries around the world. Hopper HQ allows social media marketers, brands and influencers to schedule Instagram posts up to years in advance, and can upload and bulk edit up to 50 images in one go.