Your Christmas ad is lovely, but…
Mark Holden, Head of Futures
There’s been a kind of inevitability to the frenzy of Christmas retail ads we’ve seen again this year. Retailers have run what is becoming the standard festive gauntlet: big emotional showpieces, fairies in a winter wonderland, celebrity stars, happy families, under-appreciated mums, songs that pull on heartstrings, and slightly quirky comedy variants.
Make no mistake, there have been some fantastically produced pieces of advertising this year. No matter what reaction the Sainsbury’s WW1-set ad provokes in you, it’s undeniable that it’s been painstakingly and strikingly crafted. The John Lewis ad is another piece of emotional storytelling that’s moved more than a few people to tears if my social media feeds are anything to go by.
But I have the sense that, in the quest to produce the most talked about, shared, emotionally-driven piece of advertising content at Christmas, we’re losing sight of shoppers a little bit. To some extent, the Christmas ad bonanza is starting to seem a little bit self-serving, with success coming down to the number of YouTube views, Twitter mentions or column inches that an ad generates.
Clearly there is merit (if not simply free media) in generating big dollops of earned media from an ad launch — in fact it’s the kind of thing all brands and agencies strive for in many ways. The problem is that I’m not sure I’ve seen any of the ‘hero’ Christmas communications recognise a clear consumer undercurrent this year. It’s apparent that many shoppers are not feeling flush: if anything, in real terms, many people are able to afford less, even with the same budgets, than in previous years. I recognise that at Christmas many people want to treat themselves, but I do find it strange that few retailers have acknowledged or played to this behaviour directly in their showpiece marketing.
More than this, I think there is a risk that, in our quest to win customers’ hearts at Christmas, we forget about the ‘head’. As Phil Barden has compellingly argued (more than once), there is no point in creating advertising that simply seeks to elicit a warm emotional response. Liking a brand is not the same as wanting it. Explicit (largely rational) and implicit (our underlying motivations, not consciously thought about) decision-drivers are not mutually exclusive things, and the best pieces of marketing invariably find ways to blend both.
In other words, a heartstring-pulling Christmas showstopper just won’t be effective if it doesn’t tap into the explicit and implicit reasons why we have to shop at Christmas. There needs to be a bit of substance behind the schmaltz. So here’s my Christmas prediction: the campaigns that provoke the biggest reactions may not be the most effective at changing or shaping shopper behaviour. I’ll revisit this again in the new year once we’ve seen retailers publish their Christmas results.
I have one last Christmas axe to grind. Christmas marketing is in many cases still ridiculously laden with cliché. Why don’t we see more UK brands being a little braver and taking more unconventional approaches? I’d like to see more brands celebrating the diversity of family life in the UK, or approaching family rituals from different perspectives. I love this Bill’s Sporting Goods ad from the US that celebrates dad-daughter relationships at Christmas, and wish we could see a bit more of this here:
See more at: http://www.arena-media.co.uk/blog/
