Comment: Are Christmas adverts worth the time (and money)?

This week John Lewis unveils its Christmas advert, but will it and others like it bring home the festive bacon?

No doubt many will be poring over John Lewis’ look, feel and efficacy in a professional manner, instead of just enjoying – or not – the moment. It is a little odd to note the way in which retailers seem increasingly to be subject to critical scrutiny for their campaigns.

For many retailers today, it would appear the onset of Christmas is less marked by the switching on of the lights and rather more by whether we gather around the festive telly and award the thumbs up to an advert following a pre-campaign campaign, as it were.

All of which means that while retailers are as ever at the mercy of consumer demand and shopper whim, they are also capable of being held to ransom by whichever agency they happen to have chosen to fashion this year’s campaign.

Imagine for a moment a session with an ad agency in which the brief for Christmas 2013 is outlined: “We’d like it to not feel over-festive, but we don’t want to lose sight of the man with the large sack. We don’t want to be too promotional, but we do have to ensure that there is a call to action as far as coming into our shops is concerned. Oh yes, and we’d quite like to use some Daft Punk or Leonard Cohen music, they always seem to strike the right note. And don’t forget it has to go ‘viral’.”

The hapless agency is then shown the door and left to get on with it, punctuated by regular progress checks from the retailer’s marketing team. And before you know it, the great day arrives and everything is in the hands of those who consume their media through a box in the living room (still the majority of the Christmas shoppers who have the means to make a difference). At this point, the ‘PR team’ can only stand, watch, hope and pray – all is in the hands of the gods.

There is just one small question to ask in all of this. Would it have been better to do nothing at all? Buying media time is pricey, as is ad creation, and would the shoppers have come anyway? Instead, retailers will probably be lambasted for poor or lacklustre campaigns or may even be accused of sexism as Mum gets the unfortunate bird ready for the table.   

Retailers’ Christmas advertising does appear to make them a hostage to fortune. Yet in our times, is the Yuletide season about gathering around the box and providing a critique of the ad campaigns that appear in 30-second bursts? Seamless media integration – windows, ads, online and on and on – nice idea, but TV still seems to be where it’s at.