Christmas spots need to innovate

When it comes to big ad moments of the year “North America has the Superbowl and Europeans have Christmas”. I’m sure you’ve heard this at some point. Which is a bit of a non-sense because the U.S. also has Christmas…Anyway, what I really want to say is that during the Superbowl, advertisers have some freedom to come up with any story, for any of their products or services – or even equity - . During Christmas, it’s a different story. One should land several touchpoints necessarily: Christmas values, product benefits, brand, vision, etc. And Christmas ads have been around for many years now and for the last 6 or 7, the John Lewis’ sadvertising formula proved to be quite successful with a lot of other brands and companies following the same type of narrative. Even John Lewis themselves, it appears they’ve hit the jackpot with the same structure: Monty, the Penguin, Buster the Boxer, Moz, The Monster…commercially they’re a hit, I’m sure, with the merchandising, retail decorations, digital activations extravaganza that comes with it. But they’re becoming a bit repetitive. And thus, the brand love might be starting to scatter. I’m sure however that Adam&Eve will turn it around next year. If there’s an agency who can, it’s them.

In my opinion, a Christmas ad should try to achieve these 5 things at once, if possible:

- Be and feel Christmas-y. Check Debenhams’ and Apple’s below. It’s not that we need to see snow, Santa Claus and a Christmas tree, but it does help if we have some classic seasonal elements.

- Have a product, service or brand relevance for the time of the year. See below Sky Cinema’s. Bang on!

- A great execution: both H&M and Apple’s have great cinematic craft. And Christmas is all about magic. All kinds of it.

- To showcase global human values. Take the subtlety of how H&M’s introduced a powerful wise woman-mom and a fairy-dad. Let’s diversify stereotyped roles.

- Finally, relatability. Simple stories, love ones, children’s dream ones, first impressions, we all have or had these.

So here’s my favourites for this year. A list, as subjective as any other.