So here it is, Merry Xmas. The festive period brings with it some of the most anticipated ads of the year, and 2024 is no exception. At least, not if you work in PR, Marketing or retail trade media. Like it or not, festive advertising discourse is ‘a thing’ – so here is our take on 2024.
Firstly, the big question for grandparents everywhere: is it really “getting earlier every year”?
Our analysis reveals a sharp spike in online discussions and searches for festive adverts in early November, aligning with their initial release.
It’s all about the buildup
This anticipation is a very British phenomenon, with 27,000 social mentions of Christmas ads generated by the UK, compared to only 5,000 mentions in the same period from the USA. This enthusiasm, however, is fleeting. Social mentions plateau by mid-November, with only a handful of the most memorable campaigns sticking in public consciousness. John Lewis is still dominating the Christmas ads discourse with the release of its advert spiking mentions by 220% right after the mid-November plateau, but again this is not sustained with mentions dropping sharply only a day or two later.
This all suggests that the anticipation – the teasers, the speculation – plays a larger role in the collective experience than the ads themselves.
Some brands are trying to counteract this attention deficit through experimentation. Waitrose chose an episodic format for its ads, developing a whodunnit-style mystery theme which unfolded over several star-studded iterations – leading to a more sustained level of social mentions than John Lewis. Mentions of Waitrose’ ads saw two notable peaks that levelled higher than pre-advert launch while mentions of John Lewis’ adverts only saw a single, sharp rise and fall in the few days around the advert’s release. With audiences now more time poor and less willing to give attention to individual executions, making them part of a wider campaign arc that rewards engagement is a clever way to build brand engagement.
SAD(vertising)!
In a(nother) particularly turbulent year, brands have had to make some tough decisions about their creative direction. We’ve come to expect festive campaigns to communicate an ideological purpose in an engaging and emotive way. From John Lewis using its Christmas spot to talk about loneliness among older people, in partnership with Age UK, to Sainsbury’s reminding viewers of the Christmas Day truce during WW1, raising money for the Royal British Legion, recent ads have seemed to focus as much on empathy for specific community groups as they have on products.
Not this year. Brands have moved away from a ‘purposeful earnestness’ and instead focused more universal topics like generosity and family. Crucially, there’s also been a focus on entertainment – with audiences seemingly tired of “sadvertising” and looking to escapism more than ever.
Back to the good old days?
How is that trend for escapism presenting itself? Firstly, through nostalgia. Sainsbury’s incorporating The BFG into its festive campaign seeks to connect us with memories from our youth, whilst John Lewis’ focus on the shared memories between two sisters is another tug at the heartstrings. With such a fractious year full of division and instability, these ads seem to reflect a want to sooth and be soothed. A need for comfort and familiar faces, whether that be beloved characters or tropes and trends we remember fondly from our childhoods.
More practically, escapism means that many brands have not reinvented the wheel, instead choosing to leverage characters and campaigns that have been used before. Whether it’s Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot, Cadbury’s Secret Santa, or the Coca-Cola truck…familiar, nostalgic creatives have been the choice for many.
Keeping it simple
What does this tell us about the future – and how communicators should position their organisations? Audiences are increasingly spread across myriad platforms and increasingly along ideological lines. With some notable exceptions, an overtly virtue-driven campaign may not land particularly well among some demographics, and instead focusing on simpler, more universal truths seems to be the route to success. Similarly, focusing on nostalgic, shared experiences is more likely to resonate among a wider audience.
It’s also key to remember that people generally don’t pay much attention to ads – and this extends to owned channel content – in general. If you want to stay top of mind with your audience, it’s important to show up with multiple touchpoints, which is why we saw more sustained discussion with Waitrose’s episodic content than others which had one large splash.
So when those festive feelings float away, remember: multichannel, sustained campaigns that focus on deeper audience truths are for life, not just for Christmas.