The Christmas ad season has kicked off with big retailers including Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer altering their plans as a consequence of the cost of living crisis.
M&S’s clothing and home advert, which last year had an extravaganza inspired by Singin’ in the Rain and Busby Berkeley’s 1930s showgirls, this year puts charitable causes at the heart of its ad.
The ad directed by The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey, which will debut at 9pm on Friday on Channel 4 before Gogglebox, features beneficiaries of the retailer’s £1m donation to 1,000 community groups and good causes through the Neighbourly platform.
Participants range from a Bolton brass band and a Bengali dance troupe to Kaotic Angels, a biker group made up of former uniformed personnel including soldiers and emergency workers, who provide meals on wheels and support for the veterans and homeless. The soundtrack features the Harry Styles song Treat People with Kindness.
The retailer has also shifted its ad a few days earlier than last year, launching on the same day as Sainsbury’s, which is putting out its ad a week earlier than previously. The supermarket chain’s decision to go before Armistice Day for the first time in at least a decade came after it reported that cash-strapped customers are bringing forward purchases to spread the cost of the festive shop.
Hefty inflation in the price of advertising spots in the run-up to Christmas, as the football World Cup and Black Friday combine with the traditional peak shopping season, are also thought to have played a part in some brands going early.
As a result, M&S and Sainsbury’s are launching before John Lewis’s ad next Thursday. The department store chain traditionally kicks off the Christmas season with its big-budget heartwarming campaigns.
Retailers are struggling to find the right tone for their annual promotional push as a surge in the cost of essentials including energy bills and food leaves many families short of cash, while others are keen to celebrate the first Christmas in two years without Covid restrictions.
Anna Braithwaite, the M&S clothing & home marketing director, said it had started in planning its Christmas ad in May but “took our idea off the table” and started again in June after it saw “the mood of nation had switched” and they could not just focus on “product and value”.
“We listen to our customers and we saw month by month that they were talking more about community and we switched to make sure we were reflecting that,” she said.
The discount grocer Lidl’s Christmas ad also launches on Friday with a charity angle. It features a teddy bear who is the mascot of Lidl Bear’s Toy Bank, a donation initiative in which new or unused toys and games will be passed on to children through the community social network Neighbourly.
By contrast, Sainsbury’s, Boots and others have stuck to big-budget ads that take viewers on a fantasy world where they can have a luxury Christmas treat.
Sainsbury’s has This Morning presenter and former Big Brother contestant Alison Hammond as a fairytale countess who puts the pressure on a minion to come up with an alternative to the traditional pudding. The ad is set to a “Bardcore” medieval style cover of the noughties hit Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus.
Boots’s offering is fronted by It’s a Sin and Year & Years star Lydia West who finds a magical pair of glasses that allow her to see people’s Christmas dreams.
“Christmas is the hardest brief of the year – it’s a time people treasure and getting the tone right is essential,” said Laurent Simon at the agency VMLY&R London which helped create Boots’s ad.
“This year, it’s been an even greater challenge as customers face worries about how they are going to pay for it. And while the tightening of belts and purse strings is a reality, we also know people still want to make Christmas magical and meaningful.”
In its second ever big-budget Christmas ad, Sports Direct goes for a skit on traditional rivals, but with a new spin linked to the Fifa World Cup which kicks off in Qatar on 20 November. The clips, all of which star former Manchester United player Eric Cantona, include a silver platter being placed on a heaving table of food, but when its domed cover is removed it reveals a football instead of a turkey.
