By the cramped nature of your work and social calendars, you’d be aware that Christmas is approaching at breakneck speed. And that means one thing in particular – the 2023 Christmas commercials are making their debut.
Now, there’s a trick to making a great Christmas commercial. It needs to be family-friendly. It needs to light up children’s imaginations. It needs to be kind and warm-spirited. If you can do all that and leave lumps in throats, all the better.
Take Aldi for instance. It’s creepy and weird.
Aldi’s line is “Good, different”. But this ad is just different without being good. It’s creepy, weird and has no spirit of Christmas at all. Aldi does very interesting marketing, but their brand voice doesn’t seem to allow them to do a good Christmas ad. It’s an ad made for ad people, not for Australia.
Then there’s Telstra. Somewhat better.
Telstra’s Christmas ad.
I
t’s quite heart-warming. It features Dasher, the reindeer who dashed and is now lost. A young girl saves the day by helping him find Santa. We were hoping for a bigger payoff at the end. But it’s quite nice. Fun fact: in the phone box at the end, the girl dials #ho ho ho. If you do that from a Telstra payphone you get to speak to Santa.
Myer doesn’t feel Christmassy.
It’s all about the regift – the gift nobody wants and is regifted from person to person. Nice insight, but it’s not really a Christmas ad. Doesn’t give you the warm fuzzies.
So let’s go international to see if anyone’s nailed it…
Tesco. Much better.
The UK does a better job of Christmas ads generally and this is a really nice one. It shows a teenager who stubbornly refuses to get into the spirit of Christmas until the end when he eventually cracks and embraces it. When you watch the whole thing, it gives you a lump in the throat. Tick.
And Apple. The winner (except for one thing).
It’s really a short film, that integrates the Apple brand and product beautifully and seamlessly. It shows two hard–hearted people whose hearts soften through the Christmas season. It’s lovely. And it captures the true spirit of Christmas. Except for one thing – it doesn’t mention Christmas! The line is “You make the holidays”. That’s a big American tech brand for you. Too woke to mention Christmas.
