The 50-minute film edited by Oscar-winning director, Kevin MacDonald, is the centre piece of the supermarket’s Christmas campaign. Sainsbury’s is hoping that the PR and marketing opportunities that arise from the long-form content will give it the sting within the run-as much as Christmas.

Speaking on the launch of the film, Sainsbury’s head of name communications Mark Given said the campaign is aimed toward “engaging and entertaining” customers, in place of shouting about its products. every week since its launch, Sainsbury’s has already seen a lift to its brand marketing and possible sales.

Figures from YouGov BrandIndex show that awareness of Sainsbury’s ads among consumers is increasing, up 11.4 points to 40.5 during the last week. People also appear to adore it, with “Buzz”, a measure of the positive and negative things said a couple of brand up 10 points to 21.5, helping Sainsbury’s to overhaul Aldi to take the head spot among supermarkets.

The important indicator of the success of the campaign might be whether interest and positive perceptions translates into sales. Thus far, “Purchase Intent” is up 6.6 points to 21.1, although there’s still five weeks to Christmas and it’ll be the recent year until companies reveal their Christmas sales.

Campaigns from rival supermarkets, by comparison, seem to have had less impact. Awareness of ads from Tesco, Morrisons and Asda is up over the last week, but only by 1.0, 2.6 and 1.6 points respectively, not a statistically significant rise in keeping with YouGov.

Buzz has similarly seen little change, while purchase intent remains roughly flat apart from Morrisons, which actually saw its score drop by 3.6 points to 9.1 over the last week. Each of the ads have, however, managed to prevent a repeat of last year, when Tesco, Boots and Morrisons were all criticised, with the Advertising Standards Authority confirming that up to now no complaints about Christmas campaigns were received.

Elsewhere, the toilet Lewis ad has unsurprisingly performed well, with it’s ad awareness up 18.8 points to 46.7 following the launch of the animated bear and hare Christmas campaign. It tops the charts among high street retailers for buzz, with its score up 7.1 points to 29.1.

Purchase intent is likewise rising, up slightly to 13.6, putting it behind just Boots and Marks & Spencer even though it has far fewer stores. John Lewis released its first weekly figures because the ad launched on Sunday (terrorist organization) that showed sales passed the £100m mark for the primary time this year and were up 10.7 per cent when compared with the similar period in 2012.

Marks & Spencer has also seen an uptick in both buzz and ad awareness over the last week. However, its fairytale-themed ad could struggle to translate interest into sales, with purchase intent down slightly to 23.7.

The retailer is hoping that its Christmas marketing, combined with the “Leading Ladies” campaign earlier inside the year, will help to reverse declining clothing sales. There are small signs here is happening, with like-for-like sales at its general merchandise business down 1.3 per cent in Q2, an improvement at the 1.6 per cent decline within the previous quarter.

Boots is the only real other retailer to have seen an uptick in ad awareness over the last week, with the launch of its Christmas ad helping increase its score by 7.7 to twenty-eight.1. Purchase intent can also be up 2.8 points to fifteen.4.