‘tis the Season for Grifting
Weaponising kids and emotions to bankrupt us is all in the game.
Christmas. You wait all year round as the “stuff” industry needle works the groove, pitching up FOMO levels until the annual bonfire of the sanities in the name of consumerism. Issa beautiful thing.
And quietly. Sitting, waiting within the time-drain of the Sky box, nestled deeply inside the streaming services and lurking on the TV— Christmas ads run on loops. Reminders of the things we bought that we didn’t need to, ghosts of the things we didn’t buy with the spectre of another year of materialism to come.
Even The Archbishop of Canterbury is having a go at the monetisation of the festive feels. We can’t even spend our way into a spiral of financial abyss without The Most Reverend Justin Welby sticking his oar in, trying to protect our wallets in the name of all that is biblical.
I’ve got news for you Welby — your common sense and fiscal decency have no place in these lands. We ate the apple gleefully and given the choice we’d do it time and time again. Get away from the front of my vault with your staff and emphasis on the importance of family — we’re going down to Gringotts and it’s all gotta go. Let us set fire to our savings in peace.
And to be honest who wants to stop spending when the Christmas adverts are this good? This Christmas retail colossus John Lewis alone fired £7million into their Elton piano reverie. Hashtags, animal-induced emotional blackmail, mixed-race families in lands where manufacturing still exists as a viable career, Argos hiring Hollywood directors — these are heady times creatively for advertising’s finest. All seemingly set in a dreamy make believe biracial Britain, a curious but noticeable quirk of seasonal tv spots.
In that spirit, let us take a look at some recent classics of the genre. May we toast corporate schmaltz in the name of Coca-Cola; the originators of the winter wallet shakedown. “Holidays are coming” — send the ravens (available for £64.99).
Argos — The Christmas Fool
Fair play to Argos. They are the great survivors of old world catalogue retailing. From being known for padlocked catalogues and shitty lottery pens, they have segue’d into absolute relevance in the digital shopping era.
This advert is their victory lap — a deserved pat on the back for all they have done. Enlisting the director of The Greatest Showman for their Christmas advert is a flex of the greatest Gatsby kind. You see that John Lewis? The neighbours be getting real noisy. They deserve some accolades.
To the ad itself, the makers have perfectly encapsulated the spirit of the season. It is based around a devious festive critter, not unlike a Harry Potter house elf, doing all the annoying shit that makes Christmas a hassle like messing up decorations, hiding shit you need and changing weather. And the solution? Buy more stuff from us. It’s about Christmas but this isn’t festive.
Can’t knock the hustle.
Sainsbury’s — The Big Night
This is lovely isnt it? Coz kids. And school play. And a black kid being a star (but hoisted up a tree by ropes whilst an expectant crowd looks on with rapt attention though?). Kind of.
“We give all we’ve got, for the ones we love”
That strapline is as poisonous and irresponsible an idea as you will see in marketing. We are not living in times of plenty, as it is plain to see. And yet it’s there, emblazoned across the screen, the lasting image after a school show of the most spectacular kind. LOVE YOUR KIDS DO YOU? GET THEM THIS ANIMATRONIC SIMBA THEN. WHY DO YOU NEED TO EAT NEXT WEEK ANYWAY? YOU’RE AN ADULT.
It’s an interesting about-face from their stop-motion The Greatest Gift campaign of 2016. Turns out that saying people need to just give themselves fully to their families instead of stuff isn’t that lucrative.
As someone who was always a tree in school productions maybe this is just the envy talking. When the bauble got caught outside the curtain at the end though, I felt that on a spiritual level. Nice touch
John Lewis — #BustertheBoxer
The UK heir to Coca-Cola’s festive marketing feels throne is John Lewis. The department store has had a vice-like grip on the Christmas consciousness since the seminal Penguin advert of 2014. They are the standard bearers for manipulating yuletide schmaltz to prise open your coffers ever-earlier each Christmas.
Penguins, dogs, trampolines, monsters, telescopes, pianos–they name it and people buy it. Did the ad happen if you didn’t sell a companion toy off the back of it?
I don’t really care that much about this year’s Elton offering. It ain’t particularly clever – it would have worked with any athlete and most entertainers. It’s one of Britain’s musical greats playing a piano. “But it’s Elton” I can hear you exhorting– he’s not doing it for free though is he? Most of these A list acts will play at a stoning in Jeddah if you chuck enough cash at them.
And so into the archive we go to 2016 and Buster the boxer. Why?
Because dogs are mint.
The ad opens with scenes eerily reminiscent of the beginning of an episode of Casualty. A trampoline is erected on an icy night setting the scene for Buster the Boxer dog to eventually claim the trampoline gift for himself following hours of taunts by an array of wild animals having a rare old time bouncing around.
It’s a nice ad; a play on the secret lives of animals. I implore you to overlook the fact that the badger piss likely gave the kid a case of bovine tuberculosis and also the unsuitability of a trampoline in those conditions. In these polarised times it hasn’t gone unnoticed that they chose a strong, classic British dog either. Brown people for the lefties, animals loving life for the PETA crowd and a boxer dog to placate the Brexiteers. As Michael Jordan once said; “Republicans buy sneakers too.”
M&S — Leave it To Mrs Claus
A fallen titan, it is again into the time capsule we go to 2017 when M&S came up with the novel idea of empowering the hitherto mysterious Mrs Claus.
We get a peek behind the curtain, the like of which hasn’t been seen since Raymond Briggs. She hides his mail and takes on a job for herself, on Christmas Eve no less, in spite the fact she has reached the glass ceiling of her profession and will never get a promotion for her efforts.
What a scene she makes out of delivering one [1] present . Santa is up to his neck in billions of the fucking things, including Alpacas of the kind aunties get you for £10 to be sent to an African family from Oxfam on your behalf. St Nick is delivering all those.
But you know what? I liked this ad. For one it didn’t completely ruin Christmas and revealing Santa Claus is in fact your over-worked, financially-squeezed dad wheezing in the garden with his arse hanging out.
There’s also a helicopter scene which looks like it has been borrowed from the spoof Apprentice horror film I wrote in my mind. In it the weight of the nonsense spoken by the candidates on-board causes a terminal cabin pressure imbalance inside the chopper resulting in it plummeting to its fiery doom at the Thames barrier. Only Jamie the headhunter from Runcorn (North Cheshire Levis 501 wearer of the year finalist 2008) survives. Still working on that script mind.
Iceland — ‘Say hello to Rang-tan’
We finish with 2018's most-talked about advert globally. Iceland Foods, for many years fronted in public by Kerry Katona, is standing on its own.
Ugh you’re going to make me the bad guy again aren’t you? Presented with a huge corporate using their most valuable advertising slot of the year to draw attention to the environmental dangers of palm oil, this should be an open goal. This should 1–0, start the car – back in time for tea.
WELL GUESS WHAT LADS? I AM RAHEEM STERLING AND SOMETIMES I WILL JUST CLART THE BALL OVER THE BAR FROM POINT BLANK RANGE FOR NO REASON. ICELAND I AM COMING FOR YOU.
The ad is a lovely animation highlighting the impending extinction facing orangutans in Borneo due to the world’s reliance on palm oil. The detail of it has been explored excellently elsewhere. I’m interested in how the agency knocked this one out of the park while the world formed a posse on their behalf.
PR-speaking it was pitch perfect. The plucky multinational denied the platform to save the earth by jobsworth Clearcast ad censors. The banned ad went viral after global beg-friend of the stars, big time tv host and despair’s own James Corden weighed in on the bloody unfairness of it all:
Except of course the ad wasn’t banned. It was originally made by Greenpeace and was never at any stage intended to be broadcast. Everyone at Iceland and Greenpeace and the agency knew and hats off to them. Over 100K original shares, 40m views and counting, Change.org petitions and celebs falling over themselves to clamber aboard the solar-powered bandwagon. Job done.
What was the frozen food giant’s next TV spot? A series of 10-second ads promoting its palm oil-free luxury mince pies. LOL — the spirit of the season.
I wonder if Corden will like that ad just as much? Actually yeah. Yeah he will.
