Retailers' Christmas ad bonanza fails to impress
Christmas is a lovely time. Food, drink, kids, family, presents, whatâs not to like? A shame it comes but once a year! (Shush there, Scrooge at the back).
Another essential part of this wonderful annual bonanza of festive fun and frivolity is the compulsory one-minute-plus Christmas ad from every major retailer.
Presumably planned and conceived back in the sweltering, sultry dog days of mid-summer, these high-budget, low-concept pieces of the advertising art have taken on a stature and meaning out of all proportion to their likely impact on sales.
Charlie Brooker in the Guardian has already lacerated this yearâs crop with his typically hilarious and coruscating prose. No attempt to match his professional wit will be attempted here. Instead, presented below is a personal creative review of some of the more high-profile efforts.
 Tesco. 40 seconds of rather forced alliteration over slow-mo happy scenes followed by 10 seconds of a smiley member of staff delivering a stilted promise to âhelp keep Christmas specialâ wins no prizes for originality or memorability. Tesco sells all the things youâd expect them to sell for Christmas. Including mince pies. Whoâd have thought it?
 Sainsburyâs. Jamieâs last hurrah. Bless his patronising little cotton socks how weâll miss him. Our last view of the cheery cherub sees him laying on a lavish spread for the cast of a truly crazy pantomime. Itâs all very colourful and wacky. Smash those garlic cloves! Some food product shots but thankfully nothing so crass as a sales message. No obvious message at all come to think of it. See ya Jamie.
 Morrisons. Oh Freddie, where did it all go wrong? Professional Yorkshireman and sometime cricketer uses trustworthy no-nonsense accent interspersed with images of smiling kids and the occasional cheeky raised eyebrow to let us know that this particular supermarket sells all the same Christmas staples as all the other supermarkets. Only more jingly.
 Waitrose. The unlikely couple return to offer more bespoke delights, from the classic to the conceptual. Christmas at Waitrose all about the food, which at least gives this overly-long and iconoclastically self-indulgent film a degree of focus. Stands out simply by being moderately classy amidst their rivalsâ unimaginative fare, though that is something of a limited compliment.
 Boots. An epic mashup of movie imagery sees Charlieâs Angels meet Mission Impossible in Matrix-style execution of Home Alone. Santa gets the elbow in this high-octane vision of devastating Christmas night planning efficiency. Itâs quite fun and zany, certainly more visually interesting than the big supermarketsâ interchangeable smiley-kids imagery. And they have made something of a campaign rather than just one big statement ad.
 Argos. Aliens come to Earth and are bemused at the bizarre things we humans do, wondering aloud why we donât all just adopt the obvious and easy option. Hands up if youâve heard this before somewhere. Also, hands up if you find a copywriter able to do more than repeat the client brief out loud.
 Iceland. Celebrity(ish) singer drives home to multi-million pound house full of multitudinous family tucking in to a monstrous spread delivered moments earlier by a cheery Iceland delivery driver. While singing. Itâs hard to conceive of imagery less relevant to the mum-heroes Iceland is trying to reach.
 Matalan. Less an ad, more a creative device and mood film with a soundtrack. Manages to convey a little more Christmas magic than some, but cannot avoid offering much the same identikit cute-kid and all-around-the-tree imagery as pretty much everyone else. Sweet enough but forgotten in less time than the minute it lasts.
 Marks & Spencers. Unlikely to win any creative awards. Or music awards. Doesnât mention any products. Or make any sort of brand claim at all. But, this campaign stands out for its distinctiveness and for being more culturally relevant than those of pretty much any competitor. Whether you like the X-Factor or not.Â
 John Lewis. Itâs wonderful. But you already knew that. It has an actual proposition. Itâs shot with a beautifully deft touch, strikes a perfect tone and communicates everything you could ever need to know about John Lewis. Work this good should make everyone else in adland look at themselves in the mirror and ask why they arenât making stuff like this. John Lewis is just a shop after all, itâs not as if thereâs any reason their rivals canât make the same claims. The difference is not the product, itâs in the courage and ambition shown.
So there we have it. A depressing bunch of executions, if truth be told, with the one glorious exception. John Lewisâs effort is so much better than all the others that itâs like watching Usain Bolt turn up for the dads race at school sports day.
The supermarkets, with the exception of Waitrose, have produced work so indistinguishable that you could swap the logos, claims, products and endlines around without causing any obvious confusion.
Marks and Spencers have at least sought to give themselves some cultural topicality. Boots has the best gags and a coherent campaign message.
But they all cower in the shadow of the latest in a stunning series of ads from John Lewis.
Justin Clouder-Planning Director Â