10 Nov ‘Tis the Season for Christmas Ads
It feels like it gets earlier every year, it’s time for the annual Christmas ad showdown. 2023’s yield brings themes of love, loss and generosity… Charles Dickens would approve! Today, these messages are more important than ever. Here are our top picks.
The simplicity of Amazon’s Christmas contender ‘Joy Ride’ is not to be sniffed at… unless those sniffles are because you’re feeling very moved. The ad follows three elderly women as they come together to relive the good old days atop a snowy sledging hill. We are transported back to their childhood selves revealing a sweet story of enduring friendship and memories. We give this our hearty approval.
Mossy Bottom Farm is the location of Barbour’s delightful ad, the home of Shaun the Sheep. When the farmer’s jacket is left in tatters from overwear, the animals set about mending it while the farmer sleeps. Needless to say, it doesn’t quite work out as planned with a patched together jacket that falls apart as their owner puts it back on. Leave it to the experts at Barbour? We think so. Funny, cute and nostalgic. Attaching a heritage brand to a home-grown animation studio feels right too.
#GiveJoy is the hashtag of Boots cinematic Christmas contribution. An innocent question from a little girl to her mother (“but who gives presents to Santa?”) leads the pair on a journey to Lapland to deliver Father Christmas a gift – because no-one else will! Spreading joy along the way, delivering Boots gifts to train drivers, plane flyers and ship captains… Santa’s is the last gift in the bag, a pair of flight socks! Val Doonican’s I’m Gonna Get There Somehow is a real toe-tapper of a soundtrack too. Not to be missed.
Aldi’s offering sees the return of Kevin the Carrot and is another animated tale. This year he’s made his way into William Conker’s Magical Christmas Factory, a Willy Wonker grocery land with rivers of gravy and golden platters of profiteroles. Lucky ticket winners are a cast of anthropomorphic veggies including spoilt sprouts, sassy cruciferous types and a greedy, gluttonous grape. Of course, Kevin the Carrot knows what’s what, with his generosity reflex and a seemingly rare ability to behave himself in Conker’s factory, he’s kindly rewarded. And who else but Jim Broadbent would be appropriate to narrate this wonderfully silly scene?
The grand finale of Christmas ads, as always, is from John Lewis. The hype is real this year with the brand releasing a 10 second ad teaser… for an advert. The retailer taps into an age-old formula ‘child-makes-unusual-friend’ and in this scenario it’s a Venus fly trap. It all starts when Alfie asks his mum to buy him a seed at the market. The seed grows and grows and eventually sprouts to a mutant size (Little Shop of Horrors style) till eventually it’s ousted into the garden. Alfie sticks by his plant friend and even shares his Christmas presents. The plant appears to eat the presents, only to spit them out unharmed with a burst of wrapping paper and confetti, much to the amazement of Alfie and family.
It’s still only November, but we’re already in the Christmas mood. Come one, come all, to celebrate with a spot of gifting!