From excitable dragons to tear-jerking gingerbread men: the art & science of Christmas advertising

As the Managing Director of global advertising agency, adam&eveDDB, I’ve had my fair share of holiday advertising hits, from an H&M campaign directed by Wes Anderson, to a recent tale of a boy and his unlikely octopus friend for Disney. It’s often a hot topic around the dinner table, and has become a feature of British culture – Christmas only really starts when the John Lewis ad breaks, right?

It was, in fact, a John Lewis ad that kickstarted the whole Christmas advert arms race back in 2010, with “The Long Wait” – a classic Christmas tale of a boy eagerly awaiting Christmas day. The twist? He wasn’t waiting to bound down the stairs and rip open his own Christmas gifts, but give his gifts to his onlooking, and rather bemused parents. Since that moment we have seen an explosion of creativity at Christmas, particularly from retailers and supermarkets looking to stay top-of-mind in the critical “golden” period for sales. Win Christmas, and it can carry your business through much tougher sales periods.

But why? Why do retailers sink millions of pounds into advertising at Christmas? And what makes an effective Christmas advertising campaign.

Does a Christmas advertising campaign really move the needle?

At adam&eveDDB, we’ve spent over a decade producing some of the most memorable festive advertising, and so we’ve got a robust understanding of why brands stand to benefit by investing at this time of year, and how they should go about it.

Recently Richard Osman and Marina Hyde of The Rest is Entertainment fame, covered the Christmas advertising phenomenon, with Marina stating, “no one is clear at all if any of this actually moves the needle”. In fact, we do know that, if done well, famous, emotional advertising at Christmas can absolutely move the needle for businesses and brands, both in the short term (i.e. immediate sales) and in the long-term (i.e. brand affinity and loyalty).

Over the decade starting 2010, John Lewis modelling in partnership with OMD Media and the Institute of Advertising Practitioners (IPA) proved that advertising drove £1.2bn incremental sales and £411m net profit, with a profit ROI of up to £10 per £1 invested. It also showed that in a like-for-like period, John Lewis grew 4.4x faster than other non-grocery retailers. So, yes, it pays to advertise at this time of year.

So, we can prove that advertising during this period is a smart idea and generates an unfair share of the market for those brands who get it right. But how do brands “get it right”?

It all comes down to emotion

A decade ago, emotional storytelling in advertising, and particularly in retail, was rare. Retailers used rational messages in their advertising to persuade shoppers to purchase from them – whether that was messaging about more variety, lower prices, or superior products.

John Lewis took a profoundly different approach, and it’s something that has now become commonplace across nearly all retailers at this time of year.

Instead of telling people what to think, brands benefit more from creating emotional stories that make people feel. It’s why we now see Christmas adverts really dialing up the emotion - from Disney‘s heartwarming tale of an unlikely friendship between a boy and an octopus (which we produced out of our New York office), to Tesco’s poignant exploration of grief and loss at Christmas.

People's reactions to these ads are irrational - they don’t derive any rational meaning from the commercials, but they are moved by them and become more affectionate towards the brand as a result.

You may think that emotion is a “soft” word, and that lots of these ads are the indulgent fantasies of creative directors across the advertising industry, rather than the calculated moves of business titans. I’m often challenged by my own family around the Christmas dinner table “why does that boy have an octopus on his head…that doesn’t tell me anything about Disney” or “what’s a bouncing boxer dog got to do with John Lewis”. And that’s, in part, the point.

These ads make you feel something rather than just telling you something, and we find that when we feel something, we are more likely to share it. It’s why the Christmas ad race has become one of the most talked about topics around festive tables across the nation (and now, the world), and why they feature on the likes of Gogglebox and The Rest Is Entertainment. It makes brands who can crack the emotional code, more famous, more top-of-mind for consumers, making them more likely to buy into those brands products and services.

Work from the likes of Les Binet, Peter Field and Mark Ritson, show that this approach is the most effective route that marketers can take, not only at this time of year, but more broadly too.

So, as you tuck into your turkey and relax into some belting Christmas TV, know that the excitable dragon, the cheerful carrot, or the tear-jerking gingerbread man in the commercial break isn’t just there to make you laugh or cry, but also to make you buy.

And it works.

It’s the art of advertising.

And I love it.