It’s almost Christmas......Anybody really care?

It came upon the midnight clear, ‘tis the season to be jolly, God rest ye merry gentlemen let nothing…. In the mood already? You should be as retailers, in a wide variety of ways, have been telling us about the forthcoming almost entirely secular food and gift fest for at least a month now.

And they’ve been doing so in ways that vary from a few rather sorry strands of lametta (and there was great rejoicing) to full-blown reminders that this is a festivity that has its roots in a sense of plenty and is a real opportunity to wallow in nostalgia as much as anything else.

A quick stroll along London’s Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and Regent Street was enough to sum up the general attitude to the season of goodwill in 2010 and, more than anything else, it looked and felt a more than usually blatant piece of commercial manipulation. Peter Cross, a director at marketing consultancy Yellowdoor, provided company and comment on a meandering couple of hours in the heart of central London.

Habitat

Tottenham Court Road

“’Footprints through the forest.’ Not sure what that’s got to do with anything.” Cross’ comment on the strapline that had been applied to the windows of the Habitat flagship on Tottenham Court Road was just the tip of the iceberg. “It’s totally unrelated to what’s going on in the window. There’s not a whiff of festivity about it,” he added. And in truth, this was the case. As Cross observed: “This looks more like a badly done back-to-school display and for a company that prides itself on good design, it’s hard to see what’s happening here.”

A couple of mini Christmas trees (minimalist), integrated into the windows might have given the game away, but this certainly did not provide a Yuletide alert.

Heals

Tottenham Court Road

Next door to Habitat, it’s always been interesting to compare the Heals take on Christmas with its neighbour and this year it comes out on top. “For the first time in years this looks good,” says Cross, pointing out the green foliage garlands applied to the exterior of the store to increase its seasonal impact.

The essence of Christmas 2010 at Heals is the celebration of the brand having been around for 200 years. It takes the form of Victorian pillar-box red bow windows filled mostly with Christmas food treats and knick-knackery. There’s even a framed Heals print informing shoppers this is a “Christmas gift market”.

Good fun, but Cross noted: “So much of the product [on display] isn’t actually Heals, which is slightly odd.”

Paperchase

Tottenham Court Road

The stationery and card retailer’s flagship has just three windows and each of them has been colour-blocked with a different colour, mixed with silver. It’s very simple and instantly effective, as the abstract 2D Christmas tree cutout used as a backdrop to each window tells you what you’re looking at and why you should go inside and pick up some stocking fillers.

Cross was impressed, but had reservations about the merchandise that was on display: “The product looks a bit cheap and lacks the sense of quality that you’d expect of Paperchase. But, it’s a very confident execution and using three different colours is bold,” he said.

Next home

Tottenham Court Road

Next Home is one of the better looking Christmas displays along Tottenham Court Road and if this is replicated in other branches, then this is a copper-bottomed effort by the retailer. Elements such as the Christmas tree created from white dinner plates and the framed silver-frosted messages with “let it snow” are bang on brand for the time of year.

Most of all, this looks festive, in a reasonably tasteful manner, taking gold, bronze, black and silver as the key colours in its main window. The secondary windows used a Christmas dinner tableau and a bedroom decked out in a decadent purple with presents around a Christmas tree.

“I like the way they have turned and twisted product to make it into something else,” said Cross.

Waterstone’s

Oxford Street East

This was the low point of the morning. Cross attacked: “All they’ve done is taken the normal ‘3 for 2’ promotion and put a bit of snow on it.” He also pointed out that fir cones sprayed with silver had then been placed in the base of the window. “It reminds me of something you might see at a school nativity play. This is rubbish.”

The only real and perceivable benefit for the retailer was that this would have cost next to nothing to design and install and was definitely capable of replication across the chain by any member of staff.

There can be little excuse for what was on display and it was hard not to feel that it might have been better had Waterstone’s done nothing at all.

Aldo

Oxford Street East

Red, glittery letters spell out the word DANCE twice in Aldo’s window at the eastern end of Oxford Street. A suitably festive sentiment perhaps until you realised, as Cross pointed out, that none of the shoes on display would be suitable for hoofing around, being, for the most part, outdoor boots for men and women.

Equally, it was hard not to be puzzled by the myriad silver microphones that were suspended from the ceiling of the window.

There was little that was celebratory and it was in keeping with the North American notion of ‘holiday’ rather than Christmas, but it did not appear to have been well thought through.

Marks & Spencer

Oxford Street East

This may be a store that is secondary along Oxford Street to the Marble Arch behemoth, but is nonetheless a very important branch for the retailer. The window this year is a long, long paean of praise to the colour gold and bears the message “As seen on TV”.

Cross proved sceptical about the value of putting this in as part of the scheme: “It’s stupid. It’s really criminal to put so much investment behind a Christmas campaign and then not really connect what’s been done on TV with what appears in the window.”

He conceded that there was “a bit of movement in the window”, large Catherine Wheel-like spinning graphics, but said that overall this was not a window that would impress.

New Look

Oxford Street East

“If this were a boutique in Streatham and you took away the name above the door, you’d think this was a bit dodgy. There is a market for this kind of thing, but you don’t have to look cheap just because you’re selling cheap merchandise.” Cross’ view on the two-windowed store near to Oxford Circus sounds harsh, but it did look like everything possible was put in the window.

In fact, very little had been changed from the window scheme that the store had installed for the opening earlier this year. The illuminated cubes on which the mannequins posed were still in place and the only tangible difference was the string of small, white lights positioned as the backdrop. Well, there was a white, feathery looking Christmas tree and some tinsel as well, but this didn’t save the day.

Zara

Oxford Street East

“Just extraordinary. It’s marginally more expensive than New Look in terms of what’s on offer, but it looks fantastic. Brilliant styling, classy mannequins and all coupled with industrial chic. It’s so cool they don’t even need to advertise.” He had a lone reservation: “It’s not actually that Christmassy - this is more like a new season window.”

The low-key grey scheme that formed the bulk of this store’s windows may not have been entirely seasonal, but a simple five-armed star studded with dressing room lights and a grey decal stating “Merry Christmas” did much to overcome this.

Liberty

Great Marlborough Street

Nearby Liberty really did the trick and made thoughts turn to Christmas. This was the best store of the day, in Cross’ opinion. With everything from a centipede with the head of a doll, to tree trunks covered with strips of Liberty print fabric, this was a real tour de force of the visual merchandiser’s art.

“This is about having the confidence not to chuck everything in the window. It’s as much about propping as product and it’s like a kid’s fantasy world, which is really what Christmas should be about,” said Cross.

And every one of the many windows that comprise the frontage of this large department store was different. Cross said that these windows were “probably better than Selfridges this year.” Praise indeed.