Creating the annual Christmas advertisement has become one of the most challenging jobs in British retail. The goal is simple: evoke festive cheer to encourage spending. Yet, for at least the fifth consecutive year, marketers must perform this task against a backdrop of global conflict, economic strain, and pervasive anxiety.
The Unenviable Task of Selling Festive Joy
How do you promote indulgence and family feasts when many are struggling to pay bills and the news is dominated by war? This is the central dilemma facing advertising teams. They navigated the subdued Covid celebrations of 2020, the sudden restriction-led excess of 2021, and the jarring cost of living crisis of 2022. From 2023 to the present day, emphasising festive togetherness can feel uncomfortably out of step with a wartorn world.
The commitment of these advertisers is noteworthy, especially as the effectiveness of traditional television commercials is increasingly questioned. Are these elaborate, cinematic productions merely shouting into a digital void? This uncertainty makes their creative efforts all the more striking.
John Lewis: Choosing Pathos Over Presents
This year, John Lewis has taken a bold and sombre route. Its advert opens on a familiar scene of post-Christmas Day fatigue. A mother pleads with her teenage children to help tidy up, while the father, embodying middle-aged disappointment, discovers a lone, forgotten gift addressed to him.
The present features a simple Post-it note, a deliberate understatement that sets up a powerful emotional switch. It contains a vinyl record of a classic club track, instantly transporting him back to his youth. This auditory time machine triggers a flood of memories featuring his now-teenage son as a toddler and a baby.
The core message is not about gift-giving, but the "achingly sad" passage of time and the poignant love a parent feels for the versions of their child that are forever gone. The ad's power lies in this raw, tragic reflection on parenthood and nostalgia, a significant departure from the retailer's traditionally heart-warming tales.
Other Retailers' Responses to a 'Mad' World
Other major UK supermarkets have adopted different, yet equally revealing, strategies to capture the public mood.
Marks & Spencer presents a darkly comic vignette starring Dawn French. Initially, she appears to be happily singing along to Christmas tunes in her car. The camera then pulls back to reveal she is stuck in a massive, completely stationary nighttime traffic jam. The ad taps into a profound sense of declinism—the feeling that everything is broken.
Salvation arrives in the form of an M&S delivery van, which opens to reveal a fully-stocked party, complete with canapés and a pianist. As chef Tom Kerridge remarks from another car, "The world's gone mad," directly echoing the brief the advertisers likely started with.
Tesco has explicitly embraced imperfection. Its accompanying press release stated it wanted to "celebrate the wonderfully relatable chaos" of a real British Christmas, moving away from the picture-perfect ideal.
Sainsbury's opted for surreal escapism, inserting Roald Dahl's Big Friendly Giant into a traditional, cosy family scene—a bizarre solution for bizarre times.
A Reflection of the National Mood
Ultimately, this year's crop of Christmas advertisements serves as a fascinating cultural barometer. They collectively acknowledge that traditional, unadulterated joy is a hard sell. Instead, they offer tragedy, trapped commuters, chaotic living rooms, and friendly giants.
These campaigns reveal the immense pressure on retailers to be both commercially effective and culturally sensitive. In trying to sell us Christmas, they have inadvertently provided a poignant snapshot of a nation navigating perpetual crisis, seeking moments of connection and comfort wherever they can be found—even in a traffic jam or a bittersweet memory.
