Tag: debenhams

So, here we are again. It’s still six weeks before Christmas Day, but the phony war starts earlier and earlier every year now. Christmas provides a unique and irresistible opportunity for brands to give themselves a boost going into the next year – a little bit like striking the first metaphorical blow at the press conference that precedes a bout of boxing, or invading Belgium.

In light of the collapse of Western civilisation that the Big Four supermarkets losing market share apparently constitutes, brand equity and brand power is ever-more important as our beloved high-street (not to mention out-of-town industrial estate) goes through a fundamental structural correction. Communicating what makes you different, better or cheaper than your rivals – and getting people to buy into that idea – is where it’s at these days and television adverts are the primary weapon.

The money that buys prime advertising space – charged at up to £250,000 per advert for the best slots in the week or so before the big day – could probably fund a medium-sized African dictator for a year, so high are the stakes.

We live in the age of the multi-platform campaign so the power of the hashtag – not to mention multi-million quid cinematic featurettes – have been deployed this year amid a massive social media push to engage the yoof with ahh! and LOL! and WTF! moments: a penguin in love; fairies delivering bribes to Twitter users; a global war in which 20 million people died…

2014’s Christmas adverts are the opening salvos in a new campaign – the campaign to see who lays the most convincing claim for the ground they want to inhabit for the next few years. Fittingly – but also tastelessly – many newspapers and blogs describe this as a battle of the Christmas adverts. Fittingly because it undoubtedly it is a battle, possibly for survival for some players; tastelessly because this year Sainsbury’s has decided that it will use trench warfare as its setting for its Christmas advert.

It’s a little bit like bringing a live grenade to a custard pie fight – poor old Monty the Penguin looks a bit stupid when you line him up next to the hot young cast of the Sainsbury’s advert, whose real-life counterparts – unlike Monty, Jools Holland or Ant & Dec – were largely mown down by machine-gun fire once the cameras stopped rolling.

Similarly, everyone else is rather left in the wake of the Sainsbury’s advert, like rubber ducks in a bath bombed by the Enola Gay. As a result of Sainsbury’s fearless approach to adopting mass killing as a backdrop to a Christmas advert, I look forward to the supermarkets employing the Cambodian genocide, Balkan conflict, Al Qaeda terrorist atrocities and the Aberfan disaster in their adverts over the next year.

No doubt the likes of Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK, would say call this strategy ‘risky’ – but on the whole I can only assume he’d approve. In these days, when the only arbiter as to what is considered an appropriate advert is how well it plays on social media, when acceptance on Twitter is the only validation required, it’s the logical – the only – conclusion.

I saw the Sainsbury’s advert breathlessly referred to as The Advert To End All Adverts, which would be quite witty, if not for its fundamental cuntishness. And it makes me wonder – if they think this is OK, what else is around the corner?

So, Merry Christmas. In the event that you aren’t blown apart by a stray advert or simply shell-shocked at the horror of it all, do let me know which is your favourite below.

Christmas Adverts 2014

Aldi

Aldi’s first real misstep when it comes to advertising. The German brand has made a success of its brand proposition and physical offering by explicitly not doing what the Big Four have done since the year dot. Until now, where they sign up to the ‘me too’ brand of supermarket Christmas advert with a battleship’s weight worth of food and a crap celeb (Jools Sodding Holland). There’s the Gin Granny from a very early ad, when Aldi ads were still excellent, but fundamentally this is as forgettable as every other Xmas ad out there. Truly, Aldi has arrived.

Rating: 2/5

Argos

Who associates hip-hop with Christmas? This chilly, charmless and actively aggravating spot for Argos does at least have the distinction of ditching the unloved Bill Nighy and Caroline Quentin-voiced sperms. A fundamentally horrible advert all told, though.

Rating: 1/5

Asda

There’s always something a bit no-nonsense about Asda’s advertising, which rather suits the brand. Here’s an advert that basically says ‘if we’re shelling out a million quid then we’re damn well going to actually advertise stuff’. A little like an Asda shop then: a necessity that you’re glad is over the second it is.

Rating: 2/5

Boots

Can’t argue with this one and as members of my close family frequently find themselves working on Christmas Day – meaning that the extended fam has often celebrated on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day to facilitate the best possible experience for them – I can relate. A nice ad, well intentioned and well made.

Rating: 4/5

Debenhams

Frankly Debenhams only enters my consciousness once a year when I’m compiling these lists, but it is the season of good cheer so they’re making an appearance. Verdict: inoffensive.

Rating: 3/5

Iceland

Call it a concession, an admission of defeat or even a cry for help. Perhaps it’s just recognition of what and where Iceland is. Profoundly not aspirational, not middle-class, not classy. Oh, what’s that speeding away into the distance? It’s Aldi and Lidl. Cheap, cheesy – Magaluf in supermarket form.

Rating: 1/5

John Lewis

As exciting, predictable and emotional as a Stephen Hendry tournament win in the mid-1990s. A triumph of efficiency – and that’s all.

Rating: 2.5/5

Lidl

An extension of the Lidl Differences series of ads that have been running, where poshos are surprised to find the lovely nosh they’ve been hoying down their gobs is from that downmarket place near the estate. Minus points for the almost-subliminal smattering of words like ‘value’ throughout, which reminded me of this.

Rating: 2/5

Littlewoods

Myleene Klass and Christopher Biggins as brand ambassadors. Crikey – what statement is being made there?. At face value there’s nothing particularly wrong with this; look closer and Myleene is busy turning beautiful, original, interesting wares at what looks like a Persian bazar into the sort of cheap and tacky shit with which you’d associate Littlewoods. Which isn’t a great message, really.

Rating: 2/5

Marks and Spencer

An expensive checklist of Christmas advert staples rendered as efficiently and lovelessly as a wall in a Barratt Home is plastered.

Rating: 2/5

Morrisons

Utterly forgettable which, given that Morrisons is by far the least visible of the Big Four, is something of a problem. Just like their stores, I don’t know what’s supposed to set them apart. And if you employ the original cheeky chappies of television in Ant and Dec, why isn’t your ad a little irreverent, like it was last year?

Rating: 2/5

Sainsbury’s

A beautiful slice of exploitative, offensive supermarket propaganda.

Rating: N/A

Tesco

Tesco has never done Christmas ads well – coming as it does in the midst of the supermarket’s biggest crisis in decades it just serves to enhance the suspicion that it’s lost sight of what it is, what its strengths are and what the core message is.

Rating: 1/5

Waitrose

Waitrose generally bucks the trend and this sets it apart from the rest of the pack nicely. Giving, showing resolve, employee stakeholding – there’s a message I can get behind at this time of year. Truly abysmal soundtrack, like, but you can’t have everything.

Rating: 4/5

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• Refresh your memories of the best and worst Christmas adverts – sob pitifully at advertising or enrage yourself to vein-throbbing standards – of previous years

Best and Worst Xmas Ads of 2013

Best and Worst Xmas Ads of 2012

Best and Worst Xmas Ads of 2011