Christmas ads keep arriving earlier and getting less original: a roundup

In Europe and the US, Christmas is without question one of the year's biggest marketing seasons — but this year's ads look tired.

Does it feel more and more like Christmas already? Beyond the carefully dressed Christmas windows and the giant trees going up outside shopping malls, Christmas ads are starting to build the holiday-is-coming mood earlier than ever.

It is one of the most important holidays of the year, so companies and brands of every size in Europe and the US do something for it. If they can't put out a video that makes people cry or laugh, they can at least mark the occasion with Christmas-only packaging.

The UK is once again the star of Christmas advertising. The Advertising Association expects brands' Christmas marketing spend in 2017 to hit a record £6 billion, up £140 million from last year and 40% higher than seven years ago.

As the competition sharpens, brands are spending more on Christmas ads — and starting earlier.

The British upmarket department store Selfridges kicked off its Christmas marketing 137 days before Christmas; Marks & Spencer put its Christmas ad online before Halloween.

The US has never taken Christmas marketing as seriously as the UK does — the Super Bowl every February is the marketing event that holds the whole country's attention. But since Christmas is a big part of the year's biggest shopping season, retailers such as Macy's and Sears join in too.

By now it has largely merged with Black Friday. Amazon put up its Black Friday countdown page on November 1, and Black Friday has effectively become "Black November," as Steve Barr, PwC's US consumer markets leader, put it in his assessment of Black Friday marketing trends.

Retailers hope a longer season means more sales, but shoppers don't necessarily keep pace. The British food retailer Co-op Food ran a survey and found that 50% of respondents thought Christmas should start on December 1 — celebrating it in November is simply too early.

So Co-op Food decided to hold its Christmas ad until December. It sees another benefit in that: far too many brands crowd their Christmas ads into November, and Co-op wants to sidestep the rush and pick up as much attention as it can.

Coca-Cola's Christmas truck touring Britain used to mark the start of the Christmas season, but John Lewis broke that tradition long ago. Since 2007, the launch of this department store's Christmas ad has been the starting gun for the Christmas advertising race.

This year it fired on November 9.

The most anticipated Christmas ad did not live up to the anticipation

The British department store John Lewis has made Christmas ads since 2007, and its gentle, feel-good blend of emotion and unbounded imagination has become something close to the ideal template for the genre.

This year, though, John Lewis's Christmas ad split opinion as never before.

In the ad, a snoring monster named Moz appears under a little boy's bed. Night after night the two of them have a wonderful time together — and then, at the end, a starlight lamp makes the monster disappear.

As of December 13 the ad had drawn more than 9.28 million views and 60,000 likes, but also 10,000 dislikes, close to the most any John Lewis ad has ever collected. The abrupt, sad ending set off an argument over whether John Lewis had actually made a good ad this year.

Some British outlets amplified the disappointment.

The Mirror wrote that the ad's biggest mistake was this: a Christmas wish list should run 12 pages long and be full of "impossible dreams," but John Lewis instead told children that "when they get a gift they don't necessarily want, their only friend in the world suddenly vanishes into consumerism." The Independent said flatly that John Lewis should have saved the $7 million it spent on the ad and given it to charity.

Prices for Christmas-ad merchandise on eBay tell the same story. In 2015, a Monty toy from the ad "Monty the Penguin" could fetch £500 on eBay; a Moz toy goes for £50.

John Lewis also lost its place as the most-viewed Christmas ad on YouTube, overtaken by H&M's Christmas film starring Nicki Minaj, Jesse Williams and Ming Xi.

More than 9 million views is still not low, but its 2015 Christmas ad passed 20 million.

Its rival Marks & Spencer, meanwhile, won plenty of praise for the Paddington Bear in its ad, which has now passed 6.6 million views. According to YouGov BrandIndex, its buzz score rose from 14 to 17 in the two weeks after launch.

Marks & Spencer probably needs the ad to lift its numbers. After pulling out of mainland China entirely late last year, it moved its focus back home — but it is making less money, with profit down 6% over the past six months.

"Storytelling" doesn't seem to matter as much anymore

Sainsbury's went further off script than John Lewis. Another strong contender for best Christmas ad every year, it dropped the storytelling approach altogether this time and brought in 200 ordinary Britons to film the ad, taking turns singing the original jingle "Every Bit of Christmas."

The ad was made by the team We Are From L.A., which shot the video for "Happy" (the theme song from Despicable Me) for the American musician Pharrell Williams.

So far this ad — black and white apart from the food, and thoroughly pleased with itself — has drawn more than 4.5 million views. But its split is even sharper than John Lewis's: more than 8,900 likes against more than 6,000 dislikes. Fans find it down to earth; critics think it falls below Sainsbury's usual standard.

It feels more like an American Christmas ad than a British one. British Christmas ads generally go for warmth and comfort, with storytelling as the mainstream approach; they are rarely silly or irreverent. American Christmas ads lean toward selling the product rather than building the brand.

Toys "R" Us, the biggest toy chain in the US and now in bankruptcy protection, ran a 30-second Christmas ad this year called "The Naughty List Is Not an Option," in which children suddenly have a change of heart and race to do the chores — all because they have new toys.

Two other department stores, JCPenney and Sears, were blunter still. JCPenney's ad stressed that its prices are very low and that some items can only be bought there; a Sears spokesperson called its campaign the company's "biggest and most aggressive promotion in recent years."

Macy's, for once, told a sad story. In its ad, a little boy keeps hoping to meet a girl he can see gazing out to sea from a distant lighthouse; it turns out she has just lost her mother. Using a lamp he received as a Christmas gift, he sends her a Morse code invitation to Christmas dinner.

Until the two children finally meet, bathed in warm Christmas tones, the whole ad is shrouded in gray gloom. The closing line pulls it back to the happy ending: "the perfect gift brings people together."

Macy's itself has reason to feel gloomy — group sales have fallen for 11 straight quarters and the stock is down about 41% since the start of the year. Its real estate is now worth more than the company, and its rival Amazon has announced it will lease part of a Macy's building in Seattle and convert it into offices.

The department store slump has been running for years worldwide. When Sainsbury's reported its latest quarter, it announced plans to cut £500 million in costs over three years and lay off 1,000 people.

As for John Lewis, the storytelling specialist, its revenue last quarter fell about 4% year on year, with an especially sharp drop in appliances and electronics.

Greg Revelle, CMO of the department store Kohl's, said: "We think retail has entered a new mode, but we're really inclined to build loyalty."

According to The Guardian, John Lewis estimates that its Christmas ads from 2012 to 2016 lifted its cumulative sales by at least 35% — the payoff from years of good work building momentum. This year's effect is a large question mark.

Storytelling is in fact one of the effective ways to build a brand and win customer loyalty. But what traditional retailers need right now is a faster lift in sales.

Animated ads stood out this year

Every Christmas brings a few beautifully made animated ads with likable heroes, but this year they made up an unusually large share. As we have reported, animated ads are becoming a new trend in the industry, because they win people over more easily and stand out in the blur of online content.

Twenty-one years on, M&M's has made a sequel to its 1996 Christmas ad. In the 1996 story, Santa Claus runs into Red and Yellow; the shock makes both Santa and Red faint, leaving Yellow alone and helpless.

In the sequel, Yellow decides to deliver the Christmas presents in Santa's place, and muddles the deliveries. It ends, of course, with the people holding each other's gifts meeting as they swap them back.

Both ads were made by BBDO, but the response was weaker this time: the old ad, posted to YouTube on November 20, has drawn more than 760,000 views, the new one only 160,000. The most common complaint from viewers: if this is a sequel to the 1996 story, why is Santa holding a smartphone when he wakes up in the 2017 version?

Also animated: according to a review by the consultancy Kantar, the Christmas ad from the discount supermarket Aldi scored highest of all on entertainment value, and it has already passed 2.5 million views.

Aldi's ad follows the Christmas adventures of Kevin the Carrot. Kevin starts out as the carrot stuck in a snowball, boards a Christmas express racing through the night, rescues a damsel in distress at the dinner table and wins her love — the two carrots share a Titanic-style embrace at the front of the train.

Next to the vague, hard-to-parse narrative Christmas ads, Aldi's has a very clear point: Aldi stores have all the Christmas food and gifts you need.

The luxury brand Tiffany paid tribute in its Christmas ad to the legendary window designer Gene Moore, which is why wooden mannequins are its heroes this year. Lego made a stop-motion ad in which Santa Claus teams up with a kung fu grandfather from the East to deliver the presents.

Animation can carry a wider range of styles than live action, and as long as some care goes into it, it rarely goes wrong.

Family love is the unchanging theme, but plenty of ads this year chose romance

The biggest surprise is Apple's Christmas ad. A married couple who dance professionally play the couple on screen: the woman dances through snowy city streets to music from her AirPods, the whole city her stage.

When she collides with the man, the two fall into step, and just as they seem about to kiss they come out of the dream — in the real world they are only two strangers passing on the street. As an ad introducing AirPods, it borrows, deftly, the same device as the film Begin Again. Doesn't it feel a lot like a Valentine's Day ad?

Ogilvy, meanwhile, built a love story in six parts for Britain's Vodafone. Martin Freeman plays a man waiting at a train station who spots a woman watching the classic It's a Wonderful Life on her phone. He tries to strike up a conversation by warning her that watching a film on mobile data is expensive; she answers that she is on Vodafone, so she doesn't have to worry.

Even with Martin Freeman in it, it has to be said: the plot is far too worn. Even teen soaps probably wouldn't write it this way now.

Heathrow Airport's ad, also built on romance, is much more charming. The teddy bears Doris and Edward celebrate 50 years of marriage, and every small moment of it is witnessed by the busy Heathrow departures hall. See — that counts as an animated ad too.

There is no shortage of family themes either. In an ad for the British retailer Boots, two sisters exchange Christmas gifts and remember the laughter and the fights of growing up together.

The TV channel Sky Cinema shows a mother and daughter watching The Sound of Music together on Christmas Eve, year after year. Over 25 years the girl grows up, the mother grows old, and the appliances and furnishings in the house change with the times. Time passes; the bond doesn't.

Traditional retailers have always been the busiest Christmas marketers, but this year e-commerce joined in

QDaily rounds up Christmas ads every year, and traditional retailers have always been the main participants. The biggest change this year is how eagerly e-commerce companies took part. In Kantar's research report, Amazon's was rated the standout Christmas ad of the year.

The stars of Amazon's ad are the delivery boxes: each one grins as it waits to be sent to its owner somewhere in the world. To the sound of "Give a Little Bit," a little girl takes a box from a delivery worker, and the smile on the box leaps to the center of the screen.

Kantar found the ad persuasive at turning views into purchases — Amazon scored 3.78 on that measure, 0.71 points above John Lewis.

A survey by Thinkbox, the British TV sales body, also shows e-commerce companies steering more of their marketing budgets into the media where traditional retailers are strong. Thinkbox says Amazon, Confused.com, Facebook, Google, Just Eat, Netflix and Purplebricks.com together spent £700 million on TV advertising in 2017. Nielsen data shows Amazon has become Britain's second-largest TV advertiser, spending more than £20 million in November and December 2016, 56% more than in 2015.

That is probably one reason UK Christmas ad spending keeps climbing.

Because China has no Christmas tradition, Christmas marketing there shows up mostly as holiday-only products. McDonald's has brought back its green Christmas cups and gingerbread men; Starbucks keeps up its tradition of a limited-edition Christmas cup every year, this time in a hand-drawn style.

KFC was probably the most aggressive Christmas marketer this year, with three Christmas buckets, a whole-roast-chicken gift box and an ad shot by its spokesperson Lu Han. It also brought in the Rainbow Chamber Singers — known for viral songs such as "I Feel My Body Being Hollowed Out" and "Spring Festival Survival Guide" — to sing a Christmas song about escaping life's troubles, "I Want a Bucket of Gifts."

"Forget the loans, forget the neck pain, forget the calories, forget the traffic, forget the failed exams, forget the endless meetings, and then let's travel the world…"

May everyone get the future those lyrics promise. Merry Christmas!

Finally, the 10 most-viewed Christmas ads on YouTube

1. H&M - A Magical Holiday (13 million)

2. Apple - Sway (9.4 million)

3. John Lewis - MozTheMonster (9.28 million)

4. Tiffany & Co. - A Tiffany Christmas (8.81 million)

5. Audi - Parking Lot (7.33 million)

6. Marks & Spencer - Paddington & The Christmas Visitor (6.61 million)

7. Very.co.uk - Get More Out of Giving (6.26 million)

8. Sainsbury's - Every Bit of Christmas (4.5 million)

9. Macy's - The Perfect Gift Brings People Together (4.07 million)

10. Aldi - Aldi Christmas Advert ft. Kevin The Carrot 2017 (2.5 million)

Cover image via Fenwick