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Caffè Nero Captures Christmas Anticipation with One More Sleep
Caffè Nero's "One More Sleep" campaign is a film-led festive advertising push launched in the United Kingdom in December 2023, created by Wonderhatch, designed to embed the brand into the emotional countdown to Christmas and drive trial of its seasonal drinks menu.
The campaign carries the dual title "One More Sleep | It's Time" and represents the first collaboration between Caffè Nero and Wonderhatch, as confirmed by the agency on its own platform. Its central mechanism is a single hero film — a format long favoured by major UK food and drink brands during the festive advertising season — supported by social-media cutdowns built for shorter-attention formats across digital channels. The narrative hook is the universal feeling of childlike anticipation in the days before Christmas, a register that positions Caffè Nero not merely as a retailer of hot drinks but as a companion through one of the most emotionally loaded periods in the British retail calendar. In the United Kingdom, where festive advertising carries an outsized cultural weight relative to almost any other market, the choice to anchor a seasonal campaign in genuine human feeling rather than product specification reflects a considered strategic decision. The campaign launched in December 2023 and was subsequently listed on Ads of the World on December 6, 2023, according to adsoftheworld.com, signalling its recognition within the global creative advertising community. Clapboard has assigned the campaign a score of 59 out of 100, a rating that places it within the competitive field of UK Christmas 2023 advertising as a competent and emotionally grounded execution, though one with room to extend its creative ambition.
The UK branded coffee-shop market was valued at approximately £4.9 billion in 2023, according to data reported by Stonex, with sales increasing 11.9% year-on-year across the same period. That growth context matters for understanding why Caffè Nero chose to invest in a narrative-led holiday campaign rather than a more transactional promotional approach. In a market expanding at pace, brand warmth and emotional salience become meaningful differentiators alongside price and location.
Caffè Nero operates in direct competition with Costa Coffee and Starbucks across the United Kingdom. Costa Coffee operated more than 2,690 UK outlets in 2023, reported as the UK market leader by outlet count, according to Stonex. Against that competitive backdrop, Caffè Nero's decision to commission Wonderhatch — a full-service creative agency and production company whose wider client roster includes brands such as Hyatt, Ford, and Rolex, per the agency's own documentation — reflects an appetite for differentiated creative rather than category-standard seasonal messaging. The UK branded coffee-shop market expanded 4.4% to 9,885 outlets in 2023, according to Stonex, meaning physical presence alone no longer separates market participants. Emotional brand identity, particularly during the Christmas period when consumer spend and sentiment are both elevated, becomes a primary competitive lever. The "One More Sleep" campaign targets that lever directly by placing Caffè Nero inside the ritual of festive anticipation rather than simply advertising a drinks menu. The campaign's objective — to launch the in-store seasonal drinks range — is served by its narrative strategy, because associating the brand with Christmas excitement makes the product range feel like a participant in the season rather than a promotional addition to it.
Wonderhatch built the "One More Sleep" campaign around a single, coherent emotional idea: the breathless, sleepless anticipation of Christmas morning. That idea is not a product claim but a human truth, and the decision to lead with it rather than with menu photography or price messaging gives the film a register more commonly associated with broadcast-scale festive advertising than with coffee-shop seasonal promotions.
The hero film is the campaign's primary asset, with social cutdowns extending its reach across platforms where shorter formats dominate. Wonderhatch describes its working method as end-to-end content creation — conceiving, producing, and delivering content within a single agency structure — which is reflected in the tonal consistency between the hero film and its derivative formats. The agency's description of the campaign on its own platform notes that the collaboration was its first with Caffè Nero, lending the work an energy of a new creative relationship finding its footing. Josh Clark-Ward, Marketing Manager at Caffè Nero, is quoted by Wonderhatch as saying: "Working with Wonderhatch is such a breath of fresh air. They're incredibly talented, but what really stands out is how fun and easy they are to work with." That assessment speaks to the production dynamic as much as to the creative output. Production credits beyond the agency and client relationship are not publicly documented in available sources, though the campaign's archive listing on clapboard.com records 39,683 views and 10 comments, indicating meaningful organic reach for a food and drink festive film operating without a confirmed major media buy. The campaign's narrative approach follows a lineage in Caffè Nero's festive history: the brand's 2020 Christmas campaign, created by CellarDoor Creative, used hand-cut paper illustrations, stop-motion animation, and kinetic typography across the United Kingdom, United States, Sweden, and Poland, as documented by CellarDoor Creative's own case material.
Caffè Nero's "One More Sleep" campaign delivered a reported 7% sales uplift alongside what Wonderhatch describes as record holiday-season sales, according to documentation published by the agency on its own platform at wonderhatch.com. These are the two concrete performance markers attached to the campaign in publicly available sources, and taken together they represent a commercially meaningful outcome for a single film-led festive advertising execution in the United Kingdom.
A 7% sales uplift during the Christmas trading period — a window when UK coffee-shop market revenues are already elevated relative to the rest of the year, per Stonex's reporting on 11.9% annual market growth — suggests the campaign accelerated purchasing behaviour rather than simply maintaining it. Record holiday-season sales is a qualitative designation that, without an absolute baseline figure, cannot be independently verified in precise terms, but the framing indicates the campaign exceeded prior comparable periods within Caffè Nero's own trading history. Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on the alignment between its emotional premise and its commercial objective. By anchoring the "One More Sleep" narrative to the launch of the seasonal drinks menu, Wonderhatch created a causal link between festive feeling and product trial. Consumers primed by the anticipation story are more likely to treat the seasonal menu as a natural expression of the Christmas moment rather than a category purchase. Clapboard has rated the campaign 59 out of 100, reflecting a competent, warmly executed holiday ad that achieves its commercial aims while leaving creative headroom for greater distinctiveness in future festive advertising cycles.
Caffè Nero's "One More Sleep" is a film-led festive advertising campaign launched in the United Kingdom in December 2023. Created by Wonderhatch, the campaign uses the emotional theme of Christmas anticipation to promote Caffè Nero's seasonal drinks menu, with a hero film and social-media cutdowns forming its core media assets.
Wonderhatch created the Caffè Nero "One More Sleep" campaign. The project marked the agency's first collaboration with Caffè Nero. Wonderhatch is a full-service creative agency and production company whose clients also include Hyatt, Ford, and Rolex, according to the agency's own published documentation.
The "One More Sleep" campaign delivered a reported 7% sales uplift and record holiday-season sales for Caffè Nero, according to Wonderhatch's own published case material. These results position the campaign as one of the more commercially effective food and drink festive advertising executions in the United Kingdom during Christmas 2023.
Caffè Nero competes directly with Costa Coffee and Starbucks in the United Kingdom. Costa Coffee held market leadership by outlet count with more than 2,690 UK sites in 2023, according to Stonex. Caffè Nero's narrative-led holiday advertising strategy prioritises emotional brand differentiation over transactional promotional messaging in that competitive context.
Clapboard assigned the "One More Sleep" campaign a score of 59 out of 100. This rating places the Caffè Nero Christmas 2023 campaign within the competent range of UK festive advertising, recognising its emotional warmth and commercial effectiveness while indicating creative scope for greater distinctiveness in future seasonal campaigns.
Wonderhatch anchored "One More Sleep" in the universal human experience of Christmas Eve anticipation, connecting that emotional truth directly to Caffè Nero's seasonal drinks launch. The strategy places the brand inside a festive ritual rather than simply advertising a product, a distinction that underpins the campaign's reported commercial performance in the UK.
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