WIREDGOV

OS gives a glimpse behind the scenes of its Christmas marketing campaign to show how a return to handcrafted art is bringing return on investment.

Ordnance Survey has launched its Christmas marketing campaign titled ‘Let Your Imagination Wander’.

Building on OS’s much loved paper map heritage, Great Britain’s national mapping service enlisted the help of paper sculpturers Dobrowolski Designs to craft a piece of festive magic.

The studio created a winter landscape that brings an outdoor wonderland to life. Characters such as campers, kite flyers, hikers and dog walkers, handcrafted with care out of paper, were invented. They inhabit a world of paper mountains and other meticulously created winter scenes, enhanced by OS’s iconic contour lines, map symbols, and icons.

Creator Nicola Dobrowolski yesterday said:

“Working with paper came so naturally to me. When I look at a piece of paper, it’s never a flat piece of paper that I see. It’s an opportunity. It’s the beginning of something wonderful.”

This new animated world makes it easy for gift-buyers to imagine their loved ones exploring real life moments outside.

The campaign builds on OS’s famous outdoors brand and aims to make OS an outdoor gifting destination all year round. OS’s brand is built upon creating experiences and lasting memories, which makes any purchase a much more thoughtful gesture for gift buyers. Its range of paper maps, books and equipment are practical and long lasting and help inspire people to get outside for the good of their physical and mental health.

Early indications from customers are proving overwhelmingly positive, with research commissioned by OS finding that 61% of customers felt the new branding made them feel more favourable to OS.*

Outdoor scenes brought to life with intricate paper sculptures for OS's Christmas campaign.

OS Marketing Director Leanne Upson yesterday said:

“Our Christmas campaign this year is more inspiring and more distinctly OS than ever – it’s about providing the escapism and sparking a wandering imagination that we all need in our lives.

“This isn’t about ticking the same old boxes when it comes to buying Christmas gifts – we are encouraging people to think a little differently with their gift buying.

“We are putting our products and their value at the heart of the creative, while tapping into the beauty of our historical cartography and our paper mapping.

“The gifts OS offers are designed to be single-use and used time and again, and they have the ability to inspire people to enjoy the world around them.”

The Christmas campaign comes off the back of the latest sales figures revealed by OS in The Guardian, which showed that over 1.5m paper maps were sold. OS is also seeing a huge rise in demand for curated guidebooks with route information contained within them, such as its Pathfinder series.

Yet 2022/23 was the first time ever that digital consumer mapping overtook paper in revenue. OS Maps app has now been downloaded approximately six million times with an average of one million users per month, as people increasingly enjoy crossing over between physical and digital maps, planning and using maps through different media.

*Study carried out by lifestyle research agency 2CV.