The Christmas Ad - Emotional Rollercoaster or Heartless Joyride
Yes it’s Christmas and with all the festivities, panic buying and work do’s comes the now much celebrated “Christmas Advert!”
We’ve all seen them, those super high budget, super emotional TV commercials that get mass press coverage, and in some cases, even have teasers to the ad itself. From John Lewis to Lidl, everyone is getting in on the act these days, which goes a long way to explaining why there is an estimated £6.8 billion spent on festival advertising every year.
It’s no doubt that Christmas adverts can be engaging; whether it’s in-store, online, print or radio. In fact, shoppers are expected to have spent a colossal £80 billion in the final six weeks of this season alone according to findings by the Centre for Retail Research report for vouchercodes.
The pressure is on for retailers and creative agencies to surpass the expectations of the public year on year, with big-budget adverts from some of the country’s, nay, the worlds, biggest retailers taking over screens, billboards and social media from as early as October.
But are they running out of ideas? Or are we becoming cynical? I for one dread the hubbub around Christmas Adverts. For me, they’ve become too obvious, formulaic and pretty annoying.
There’s always been some controversy around these commercials. Offence is caused, marks are missed, ideas are bad. Or... and this one really gets my goat... classic songs are butchered and turned into a jaunty folk song.
Yet every year, this same format is regurgitated on us in an attempt to drag us by our heart strings all the way to the checkouts. Clearly it works, but are we becoming desensitised to it? Sales figures would say no as we currently spend more at Christmas now than ever before (Ben to fact check) but this could be put down to a multitude of factors; from population growth to inflated costs.
However what it would explain is why the narrative to these adverts, particularly by the likes of John Lewis, seem to continuously up the emotional ante in a bid to guilt us in to spending our money. A strategy more associated with charitable organisations has somehow been twisted and turned in to a manual that reads “The Retailers Guide to Christmas Profits;” the envelope to which is being pushed continuously.
Just look at the evidence; The Long await by John Lewis was great (apart from The terrible Smiths cover). But it was so successful that it kickstarted this war on our emotions.
And only recently have we seen companies like Ikea go in a completely different direction for their first ever Christmas ad feat. Double D E the man Skepta dubbed “The greatest MC of all time”. It’s a total breath of fresh air in the Christmas Ad world and it gave us hope that maybe retailers are catching on that emotional blackmail it’s very Christmassy...
What do you think about Christmas adverts... are they just part of the build up to Christmas? Or emotional blackmail with Hollywood budgets trying to make us spend more money??