Christmas Ad Season: The Ideas That Warmed Hearts This Year

Whose ad is the most creative? Who is just being clever? And what does it all mean?

Christmas is still two weeks away, but as the biggest holiday of the year in Europe and the US, the Christmas season has more or less been under way for two months.

Every year around this time, brands roll out their seasonal marketing. Department stores dress their windows for the holidays, consumer goods makers put out limited-edition Christmas packaging, and Christmas ads of every kind appear. It has become an annual tradition.

Some industries love Christmas ads and almost never skip a year: department stores, fast-moving consumer goods and food. It is like the Spring Festival in China, when you can always count on ads from Coca-Cola and snack makers.

Take John Lewis, "the department store that makes the best ads." Every year since 2007 it has released a polished Christmas ad, and in Britain its arrival marks the start of the Christmas season. Wikipedia even has

a page devoted to "John Lewis Christmas adverts"

.

Christmas marketing starts in October and runs to the end of December, covering most of the winter. And the tone of Christmas ads tends to be very "mainstream": dreams, happiness, family.

So brands want something fresh in their annual Christmas ad, but nothing so out of line that it backfires. That takes real thought. Below are the highlights of this year's Christmas ads (mostly video).

Two ads with more than 20 million YouTube views, both full of imagination

This year John Lewis lived up to expectations with its Christmas ad Man on the Moon, which many readers have probably already seen.

In the ad, a little girl looks through her telescope and sees a lonely old man living on the moon. She tries everything to wave hello, but he never sees her. Then the old man receives a Christmas gift from Earth: a telescope. The ad cuts between his teary eyes at one end of the telescope and her smiling eyes at the other, and closes on its message: "Show someone they're loved this Christmas."

In the YouTube comments, a simple "Right in the feels…" got 171 upvotes. That probably sums up what people want from a Christmas ad: warmth without cliché, hitting you in just the right spot.

(The song is "Half the World Away," sung by 19-year-old Norwegian singer Aurora Aksnes. You're welcome.)

John Lewis ad "Man on the Moon"

Sainsbury's, another British retailer, is compared with John Lewis every year. This year its Christmas ad is also very well made, and it has even drawn more views than John Lewis's.

The star is a cat named Mog, the heroine of a classic children's book series that ran to 16 books, from Mog the Forgetful Cat in 1970 to Goodbye Mog in 2002. As cats go, she is something of a legend.

So the Sainsbury's ad brings back a classic character. In the middle of a nightmare, Mog smells something burning in the oven. She leaps about and wrecks the kitchen, and in the process accidentally dials the fire brigade. Firefighters arrive, and Mog is hailed as the hero who saved the house. But the place is a mess and Christmas seems ruined, until the neighbors arrive with food and a Christmas tree and share a lively Christmas with the family.

A cat in the lead role is rare in Christmas ads. But cats are popular online all over the world, and a cute, cheerful approach suits the season, so it is no surprise the ad spread so widely.

Alongside the ad, the Mog series has a new book, Mog's Christmas Calamity. Proceeds from sales go to the British charity Save the Children for children's education.

Sainsbury's ad "Mog's Christmas Calamity"

The most popular ad element is not Santa or reindeer, but...

Santa Claus and reindeer are classic Christmas elements, and they turn up in shop windows every year. But an ad agency that still builds a brand's ideas around them is probably being lazy rather than classic.

Instead, supporting players with some link to Christmas, but not at its center, have become the popular elements in Christmas ads: fairies, penguins, snow, children, toys, heartwarming songs...

H&M's Christmas ad cast Katy Perry as a fairy who moves through gingerbread men, nutcrackers, Frozen and other themes.

Barnes & Noble's ad had Lady Gaga and 89-year-old American singer Tony Bennett perform a Christmas song-and-dance number together.

Some went against convention

To stand out in the great Christmas ad parade, some brands take a riskier route with unconventional ideas. One slip, though, can bring a flood of criticism.

The British luxury brand Mulberry, for instance, made an over-the-top ad that films the heroine receiving a luxury handbag as if it were the birth of the Christ child: the "parents" celebrate, neighbors file in to admire it, and a choir sings in the background... But some felt that using a handbag to poke fun at something as sacred as Christmas and the Christ child went too far.

Mulberry Christmas ad "The Miracle"

With so many Christmas ads that viewers' heads spin, Nestlé's Kit Kat went the other way and made a blank ad with nothing in it. The 30-second TV spot has only background sound, and the screen stays a grayish white throughout, so you might think you had arrived in Beijing. The message is Kit Kat's own slogan: "Have a break, have a Kit Kat."

Kit Kat ad

Lessons from past Christmases can also make a clever starting point. Have you ever received a useless gift you did not want? In that moment all you can do is stretch your lips, tense your face and smile (falsely), while crying inside. The department store Harvey Nichols built this year's Christmas campaign on that: avoid the "gift face" — come to us, we have everything.

The slightly wicked idea continues the style of earlier Harvey Nichols ads that won awards at Cannes. In 2013 its Christmas ad "Sorry, I Spent It on Myself" said that while everyone talks about sharing at Christmas, what matters most to us is you.

Harvey Nichols "Avoid the gift face"

Out of new ideas? Get clever

Since John Lewis became the benchmark for Christmas ads, quite a few brands have decided it pays to shelter under a big tree, and have tried to grab attention by copying or continuing John Lewis's "Man on the Moon."

The German discount supermarket Aldi wrote a sequel in which the white-haired man on the moon gets telescopes from both John Lewis and Aldi. Aldi's is £40 cheaper. It cannot show him as far as Earth, but it does let him see an old lady floating toward him by balloon... It is rather fun, and it gets across that Aldi offers good value.

Aldi's ad continues John Lewis's story

The charity Age UK, meanwhile, partnered officially with John Lewis when the ad launched, and used the moment to remind people of elderly people living alone (on the moon). But the ad cost more than £7 million to make, and some people online complained that John Lewis should simply have given that money to Age UK.

Charity Age UK ad

Believe it or not, someone did just that. The sandwich chain Pret a Manger gave the money it had set aside for a Christmas ad to five charities. It earned goodwill and, in the name of charity, changed the subject — a cost-effective move.

If one ad is not enough, win by volume

Christmas marketing often lasts two or three months, from October to December. How can a single ad keep the buzz going that long?

Not every brand can get by on one ad the way John Lewis does. So some have started spreading attention across many pieces and filling the whole season with ads (much as Tmall holds "Double 11" for a single day while other e-commerce platforms stretch it across all of November).

Britain's Marks & Spencer did exactly this. It made a series of six ads called "Adventures in Surprise," running from early November to the end of December. They feature M&S's new winter products, such as penguin-shaped cakes and salmon pearl mousse. M&S also produced a series of Christmas tips: how to lay a Christmas table, how to decorate a tree, how to wrap oddly shaped gifts...

Peet's, the coffee brand that in October bought the specialty roasters Intelligentsia and Stumptown, prepared seven Christmas ads. Four show handcrafted coffee-making, such as a "Jingle Bells" stitched together from the sounds of coffee tasting. The other three, 15-second shorts, use stop-motion to show "coffee bean art," arranging beans into Santa Claus, reindeer and penguins that look endearingly goofy.

Peet's Christmas ad

The retailer Target made

a series of fairy-tale adventures

shown across TV ads, online video and its stores at the same time, along with an online audiobook.

Target's online storybook

Get people involved

Oreo launched two DIY limited-edition packs. Two artists drew the designs and customers color them in, like the coloring books that were popular a while ago. The DIY part happens online, and once you finish you can order, pay and have it delivered to your door.

It is holiday marketing, but Oreo's parent company, Mondelez International, also wants to use it to build up its e-commerce business. Mondelez has said it plans to raise e-commerce revenue from US$100 million now to US$1 billion by 2020.

Oreo's online custom holiday packaging

McDonald's in Britain released a Christmas ad about a family of five who pass a McDonald's on a trip. It then invites viewers to sing the song from the ad, "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," record it and upload it.

McDonald's ad

In the end, what they sell is "family" and "sharing"

After all these, you may have noticed that certain companies and industries are especially keen on Christmas ads, such as department stores and food. Of course, just as Chinese families stock up for the Spring Festival, merchants will not let a shopping season as important as Christmas slip by.

But there is another truth: these industries are mostly doing badly.

With the rise of e-commerce, the good days of traditional department stores are over, and Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, shows it plainly. According to the market research firm ShopperTrak, US brick-and-mortar retail sales on Black Friday totaled US$11.6 billion last year; this year they fell to US$10.4 billion.

To win shoppers back from e-commerce, many traditional stores started their promotions early this year, with Best Buy, Target and Walmart all moving discounts up to Thursday morning. The effort these department stores pour into Christmas ads follows the same logic.

Packaged food is not doing well either. One reason is that consumers now prefer fresh and organic food. After hearing so many stories about additives, they are frightened by the very words "processed food." In the past year alone, packaged food lost US$4 billion in market share.

According to an analysis by Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow

, the 25 largest US food and beverage companies have lost US$18 billion in market share since 2009, "like an iceberg melting, losing a little each year."

That is exactly why these declining industries have to cling all the harder to Christmas, a shopping season handed to them as a gift, to lift their results.

The other truth is that although some ads choose to poke fun, the warm tone of family, sharing and joy is still hard to challenge.

PayPal is an example of a brand scolded for telling the truth. Its ad accidentally hinted at a cruel fact: Santa Claus does not exist, and your parents bought all the presents.

PayPal Christmas ad "No Gifts"

Even if it is for the children's sake, adults want to keep the holiday's fairy-tale atmosphere (often for their own sake, too). People still like to see things that may be clichéd but make them feel good. Well, this is a holiday with thoroughly wholesome values.