Advertisers consider Christmas the UK’s equivalent to the Superbowl. Every year, creatives spend months crafting adverts that can pull on our heartstrings, fill us with joy and, most importantly, inspire us to reach into our pockets.
Brands are more than willing to spend big to leave their mark on Yule. According to forecasts by the Advertising Association and marketing analytics firm WARC, this year will see Christmas ad spending soar to £10.5bn, a nearly 8% increase on 2023.
This emphasis on seasonal spending is understandable. In spite of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the total value of Christmas sales is set to exceed £88bn this year, according to the Centre for Retail Research. A well-planned campaign can prove powerful when it comes to where this money is spent. In a 2024 YouGov study, 19% of parents said they got their gift inspiration from a TV or radio advert.
But with so much investment and an increasing number of brands wanting a slice of the festive advertising pie, is it still possible for a single ad to stand out?
How to come up with a creative Christmas idea
There are several things to consider when creating a festive advert. Most creative campaigns look to avoid clichés or common motifs, but if ever a time calls for these it is Christmas. Be they paper hats, snowfall, bells, presents or a turkey dinner, there are certain staples that consumers simply expect in their Christmas ads.
“That’s why it’s the hardest brief of the year,” says Laurent Simon, chief creative officer at communications agency BMB.
It is not only a case of brands pulling on the same imagery and soundscapes for their Christmas offerings, but also on the same consumer insights.
“You’ve got thousands of retailers making ads at the same time, because this is when they make their money,” he says. “As a creative, you’ve got to be watchful for the fact that similar insights, creative ideas and production techniques might be used. You really have to think about whether your work is fresh and different.”
You also have to read the room. “Be respectful of the climate,” says Simon. He points out that there has been a perceptible shift over the past five years, from adverts designed to make people cry to those designed to make them laugh. “If you add up Brexit, Covid, inflation, the cost-of-living crisis and wars, you realise you need a little fun and levity at Christmastime. But you’ve got to be able to read the situation, you can’t risk being tone-deaf.”
Brands also mustn’t forget the basics. “You’ve got to remember to showcase the products,” says Nicky Bullard, group chief creative officer at marketing communications agency MullenLowe. “That sounds obvious, but sometimes brands can get caught up in the big story and the joy and the warmth. But, if you’re in retail, you have to shift products.”
It’s the hardest brief of the year
This year, Bullard’s team worked on the advert for Freemans, an online retailer, and they were very clear on the focus. “We didn’t go down a big, fluffy story route,” says Bullard. In the Freemans ad, a sequin-clad Sophie Ellis-Bexter stomps down snowy paths (along with her “style squad”) to deliver perfectly chosen gifts to British residents.
“It’s about being clear about what you’re selling, while igniting that joy in your audience,” says Bullard. “It’s a wonderful moment to get people to love the brand because they’re in an emotionally heightened state.”
For Jonathan Parker and Chris Birch, executive creative directors at media company VCCP, the best way to avoid the Christmas clichés is to make your ads part of a campaign you run all year round.
The pair have worked with confectioner Cadbury’s for several years now, so their “Secret Santa” ad has become a “seasonal ritual that we’re building on every year,” says Parker. Cadbury’s year-round advertising focuses on the expression of generosity. Parker highlights the “There’s a Glass and a Half in Everyone” campaign, which depicts examples of everyday acts of generosity. At Easter, the brand hides a virtual egg somewhere in the world for people to find.
“You’ve got to find the unique thing that the brand stands for at Christmas and communicate that,” says Birch. “Then maybe put some snow in the background. But if you start with the snow or with Christmas jumpers, you’ll end up with something very generic.”
What is the process for creating a Christmas ad?
Creating a piece of work that takes all of this into account requires time, so it’s only natural for brands to take the prep-work seriously.
“Working on any retail account can be tricky,” says Bullard. “You need to come up with an idea that you can drop product into because you don’t know what will be trending by the time you get to Christmas.”
If you start with the snow, you’ll end up with something generic
In Simon’s experience working with big brands on their Christmas ads, the conversations begin in January and the team will spend the first three to four months of the year discussing strategy and insights, trying to anticipate what the collective national mood might be by late November. “The role of the creative is to try to be Nostradamus and predict what you think might happen nine months down the line,” he says.
Then, he says, you spend the second trimester of the year creating early versions of the work, thinking about how to tell the story and writing scripts. Around June you start thinking about production.
“What starting so early buys you is interrogation and creative time,” says Birch. Though how early this is really depends on the brand itself.
“We know from friends in the industry that John Lewis starts on their next ad the day after their current ad goes on air,” says Parker. “But I’ve worked with some clients who start a month or so before.”
Have we reached peak Christmas ad?
Festive television adverts are now an indisputable part of the British Christmas season, but their popularity has not always been so high. Data from Google Trends, which analyses the comparative number of searches around particular topics, shows that there has been a considerable swell in interest over the past decade. This renaissance of the Christmas ad is normally attributed to John Lewis’s 2013 offering, “The Bear and the Hare”. The ad won several awards, spawned dozens of copycats and made the brand almost synonymous with the festive season.
Since then, however, interest appears to be starting to wane. The Google Trends data shows appetite for Christmas ads reaching a zenith in 2016, before starting to drop off again.
For Bullard, this is partly due to a lack of originality. “I’ve worked with brands in the past who said, ‘I want a John Lewis ad’,” she says. “And you have to say, ‘no, you don’t. You want your ad.’”
She cites last year as a watershed moment when viewers and creatives alike started to get bored. “No one wants any more plinky plonky piano music where someone has recorded a classic track in gentler tones,” she says. “We saw a winning formula, everyone jumped on it, then it became boring. Now people are shaking things up and so I think next year we’ll see some absolute crackers.”
The role of the creative is to try to be Nostradamus
VCCP’s Birch agrees. “When ‘The Bear and the Hare’ came out, there was really only John Lewis doing things well,” he says. “Now lots of people are doing it well and I think excitement is growing. It gives a real focus to the advertising industry with everyone trying to outdo each other. And the beneficiaries of that are, hopefully, the public.”
Simon, who created the much-lauded Bear and Hare advert, likens the current landscape to that of television broadly. In the early days of streaming, there were key shows that everyone watched but, as the options grew, a saturation point was reached where only the very best series and films stood out. “It will always be down to the quality of the story,” he says. “If something is really good, you’ll watch it. If it’s average, you won’t.”
This issue of oversaturation is also not confined to Christmas ads, he says. “There is a saturation in terms of how often, and how many, ads people are being exposed to. That’s true of Christmas advertising, but it’s true of advertising all year round, too.”
For Parker, the shift in advertising norms and consumer behaviour won’t necessarily mean the end of Christmas ads, but it does require a rethink. “It’s the one time the public actually likes watching what we do,” he says. “But it has to evolve. The TV spot’s days are numbered – everything we do is now on a hundred different channels and working in different ways online and on social. We have to evolve to reach people.”
Ultimately, says Laurent, the survival of Christmas ads is predicated on how well they work commercially. John Lewis’s ad may have made the brand part of the country’s cultural life around Christmas, but it also sold a lot of products. “Where there is money to be made, people are going to try to get a slice of that pie,” he says.
As long as Christmas remains a season for spending, we can look forward to more adverts that capture our imagination. But only the truly original ones will succeed in opening our wallets too.
