How an ad about rejecting unloved Christmas traditions echoed around the world

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Below, we dig into consumer sentiment towards this year’s more notable Christmas adverts.

Further down, the Unmade Index starts the week with a fall as Seven falls back below a $400m market cap, and Motio declines to a new low.

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How controversy made Marks & Spencer’s Christmas campaign the most talked about in 2023

Seja Al Zaidi writes:

It may not yet be December, but most Christmas advertising campaigns have already launched.

The first major brand to air its festive ad locally was Lindt Chocolate, with its first spot airing back on October 1. Target and Big W followed in late October, and from November 1, Kmart and TK Maxx debuted their campaigns. Other notable brands to have released their ads in early November include Kmart, Myer, Officeworks, Woolworths and Australia Post.

There’s a great deal more interest in Christmas advertising across search and social channels this year compared to the previous period in Australia – 510% more to be exact, according to media monitoring data from Meltwater.

There’s a lot more positive than negative sentiment locally, too. Mentions across platforms including news, broadcast, social, digital and blogs are largely neutral, but 30.6% of them are positive in nature as opposed to 16.9% being negative.

The UK – where brands’ Christmas ads are a bigger part of the news agenda – has seen an even more significant uplift in chatter. That’s largely due to a controversial advertisement for retailer Marks & Spencer created by the agency Mother. Total mentions across the aforementioned media channels has skyrocketed 1457% on last year, making a daily average of 2440 mentions.

The Marks and Spencer ad which drew so much attention featured celebrities rejecting the parts of Christmas tradition they didn’t like, with the tagline “Love Thismas, not Thatmas”. It included singer Sophie Ellis Bexter putting a blowtorch to Christmas cards and Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham throwing decorations into a wood chipper.

It then drew further headlines with an outtake shared on Instagram that showed red, white and green paper crowns being burnt in a fireplace. Some critics perceived the colours of the hats in the fire as matching those seen in the Palestinian flag.

M&S responded with contrition, saying “the intent was to playfully show that some people just don’t enjoy wearing paper party hats”.

X (formerly known as Twitter) showed that the topic of the M&S ad drew the most engagement. The top three search results for ‘Christmas ad’ on the platform in the UK were all related to that particular controversial campaign.

It was, however, deemed by Meltwater as the Christmas ad that has caused the most stir around the world, with over 46,000 mentions across news, broadcast, social, digital and blogs. Chatter surrounding the ad spiked to almost 15,000 on November 3rd, two days after it was released.

Sentiment towards the ad was largely negative – 86% of non neutral mentions of the ad were negative, and most of them took place on Twitter (13.6k).

As expected, the ad stirred the most engagement in the UK, followed by the US.

Australia came in sixth, with New South Wales residents the most outspoken on their thoughts of the campaign.

Australian ads land with a splash

Several local Christmas campaigns have already created buzz. To mark The Monkeys’ fifth year of creating Australia Post’s Christmas commercials, they devised a unique idea in the ‘Nick the Intern’ campaign, which sees Santa Claus go undercover as an AusPost intern to discover the secrets of their Christmas delivery methods – sans magic. Canda Media Intelligence estimates Australia Post has spent around a quarter million dollars to date on airing the 30-second version of the ad.

One European adman ranked it as one of his top picks of the season.

The Monkeys have had their last hurrah with Telstra’s Christmas time campaigns, given the telecommunications giant has ended its relationship with the agency, CHEP and DDB in favour of a bespoke agency operation, +61. In this year’s ‘Hello Christmas’ campaign, Dasher the reindeer is found lost in suburban Australia, before being guided home with the help of a Telstra payphone. It was directed by Glendyn Ivin of Exit. Chief marketing officer Brent Smart praised the “uniquely Australian” nature of the campaign, saying “I want to especially pay tribute to The Monkeys for a great piece of work, what a way to go out on the brand.”

Canda Media Intelligence estimates Telstra spent $70,000 airing the 60 second version of the ad between 12-19 November.

It stirred up a notable degree of positive sentiment across social media.

BMF’s Christmas spot for Aldi was set to a festive version of Dirty Dancing track  ‘(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life’, and designed to show Australians a Christmas when you “Go Big on the Little Things”. Canda estimates $400,000 was spent airing the shorter 30 second version of the ad between 12-19 November.

Viewers likened the singing potato in the ad to the leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton.

Not all UK ads left a negative impression

British department store John Lewis made a stir with its Snapper: The Perfect Tree campaign, released on November 9th and created by Saatchi and Saatchi.

A word cloud produced by Meltwater showed the John Lewis campaign was the second most talked about in the UK, after the M&S ad.

Andrea Bocelli graced the advert with a rock opera tune to accompany the retailer’s tried and true formula of a heartwarming story featuring a child and an unusual friend.

Some consumers felt like the ad didn’t live up to the brand’s legacy of delivering memorable Christmas time campaigns.

M&S ad makes waves across the pond

The United States straddled the centre when it came to mentions, in between Australia and the UK. According to Meltwater, there was a 404% increase in Christmas advert mentions and searches on last year, solidifying the trend of massively increased interest and discussion in Christmas campaigns this year.

Surprisingly, the Christmas ad with the most engagement on X in the United States was the Marks & Spencer campaign, meaning it might just be the most controversial Christmas ad in the world this year, with the top two most engaged tweets referencing the ad in a manner that dismissed consumer’s complaints towards it.

Christmas advertising in the United States takes a backseat to Super Bowl advertising, which is a much more sacred cultural tradition, and a far more critical event in the campaign calendar. UK retailers like John Lewis have established traditions of making their annual Christmas ad release a much-anticipated event – the Super Bowl assumes that level of importance advertising-wise across the pond.

Trending topics pertaining to Christmas ads across all channels revealed the two campaigns mentioned most involved were somehow race-related or touched on race-based, politicised ideals.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) made a splash with its provocative Christmas advert from creative agency House 337 urging consumers to ditch culinary tradition and opt for a vegan Christmas instead.

The spot introduces viewers to a young turkey named Tessa who is initially seen enjoying Christmas customs before being sent to an abattoir, likely to turn into Christmas dinner for an American family. The ad ends with the message: “Let’s kill the tradition, not the turkey”.

Amazon’s Beatles-soundtracked Christmas ad, “Joy Ride”, featured three elderly women huddled together on a park bench relishing in the nostalgia of their youth and memories of the past. The ad was produced by Amazon’s internal creative team in conjunction with production company Hungry Man, and was directed by award-winning director, Wayne McClammy.

Creative purists derided the Amazon ad as cliched, with Campaign magazine labelling it “turkey of the week”. But marketing academic Mark Ritson argued on LinkedIn that data proved the ad “a work of genius”.

There’s time yet for more businesses and brands to release their Christmas advertisements, but as far as notoriety goes, one things appears to be certain – none of them will be topping Marks & Spencer this year.

Unmade Index droops

The Unmade Index started the week with a dip, falling 0.5% to 606 points.

Of the larger stocks, Seven West Media had the biggest fall, losing 1.92% and falling back below a $400m market capitalisation.

At the smaller end of town, out of home player Motio lost 6.67% taking it down to its lowest market cap since 2020

Time to leave you to your Tuesday. We’ll be back with a midweek update tomorrow.

Have a great day.

letters@unmade.media

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