As if this week hasn’t been ‘there’s something in my eye’ enough after Joe Biden and vaccine hopes, along come the Christmas adverts that have officially sent our tear ducts into overdrive.
With their photogenic cherubs, twinkling lights and bell-heavy jingles, the emotions of an entire nation have seemingly been wrung out by SuperValu’s festive offering.
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Featuring a little boy hoping and wishing for his grandfather (and not Santa, as we are led to assume) to make an appearance on Christmas Eve, the ad set Twitter off on a mass weepie session.
We’d only just managed to get over the heart-swelling Coca-Cola ad that also dropped earlier this week. Directed by Taika Waititi, the Coca-Cola ad features a dad working on an offshore oil-rig, determined to get his daughter’s letter to Santa in the North Pole.
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We haven’t even gotten to the annual John Lewis advert yet, by now in itself a water-cooler moment every year.
If previous form is to be believed, the John Lewis advert — rumoured to be airing this Sunday, during an ad break for I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! — will have every viewer in the country reaching for the tissues. Already, it’s been hinted that the ad will be inspired by the ‘heartwarming acts of kindness’ seen across the country at this unprecedented time.
It could be argued that this ‘unprecedented time’ (let’s not use the C-word) is causing conundrums galore for advertisers.
Already, commentators have noted that SuperValu, reuniting a young boy with his grandfather, is taking slight liberties with the concept of safe social distancing.
Yet according to those in the business, taking liberties is exactly what the advertising industry should do this year.
“At the very heart of advertising is creating,” says Charley Stoney, CEO of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland. “It’s not real life. Our job is to create a positive emotion around a brand, that results in people having a warm association with that brand.
“You also have to remember that an ad ideally has to live a year, to five or even ten years,” Stoney adds. “There’s little point in creating something specifically compliant with Covid right now.”
Some things never change, notes Rory Hamilton, executive creative director of the ad agency Boys & Girls. “I think the perfect iconic Christmas ad needs a few ingredients.
“Christmas is a time for family, friends and more traditional values, but if the ad strays into ‘sad-vertising’ then people will see right through it.
“I think a great Christmas ad needs a little bit of magic, we all want to believe at Christmas so a little magic goes a long way.
“Finally, if you want it to become a classic, it has to be timeless. All the great Christmas ads feel like part of Christmas tradition the first time you see them, though running the same ad for 20 years certainly helps.”
David Douglas, MD of Ebow the Digital Agency, reckons that SuperValu have created something special.
“It’s been a hard year on grandparents and kids, and at Christmas we need the heartstrings pulled,” he observes.
“It’s not too schmaltzy and not overproduced. And even if we can’t see granny and granddad this year, what is wrong with giving that sense of hope?
“Should Rudolph no longer have a red nose because it could be interpreted as cruelty towards animals?”
Traditionally, Christmas adverts have been about the coming together of family, and a huge sense of splashy celebration.
This year, given the uncertainty of the economic climate, the emphasis is likely to be on the former in this year’s crop of ads.
“Research has shown that consumers do not want to see Covid in their Christmas adverts this year,” says Stoney. “They want escapism. They want emotion.
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“Even if you look at the Lidl ad (in which elves create a festive feast within the Lidl store, it’s about food but really, it’s emotional. It’s very Disney, it’s very schmaltzy — you can’t help but smile. It’s perfect in that sense.”
“[This year’s Christmas adverts] will definitely come down to family, although food is always a close second,” Douglas agrees.
“The commercial element of buying presents is crucial to a company, but this year brands will err on the side of safety.
“It’s likely they will be asking themselves, ‘how far do you go before you become someone who is helping in today’s society, versus someone who is capitalising in today’s society’?”
Where charming warmth and sentimentality will likely be all over our screens in the coming weeks, this year’s crop of TV adverts will probably sidestep controversy, boundary-pushing and irony.
“There’s a balance to be struck, and irreverence is very popular in advertising, and the Irish psyche is kind of happy to take the p*** a bit,” notes Douglas.
“But this year, people will have lost loved ones and not seen their loved ones. It’s a tender moment this year, and it has to be respected. That whole thing of all PR is good PR? Not really, at least, not this year.”
Ultimately, advertisers want to create cuddly emotions towards their product — but trending on Twitter is definitely part of the plan too.
“Up until a few years ago, the industry was being run by analytics and data,” observes Stoney.
“There was then this huge push to digital, and the industry discovered that, in the case of John Lewis coming out with this emotive ad, it can turn the fortunes of a store around. We were crying out for something that would capture our hearts like that.”
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Ad man and film director Nick Kelly notes that the general theme for Christmas adverts, irrespective of the year, seems to be “underneath we’re all the same really”, especially for big brands like John Lewis, and Guinness, with heavy doses of unexpected inter-generational and hands-across-the-divide connection, and the innocent wisdom of kids showing up the foolish cynicism of adults. “Essentially, any of the storylines in Love Actually can be tailored to suit,” he observes.
Certainly, some adverts have stood the test of time, and are likely to be revived in the coming weeks.
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In fact, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without a look at the iconic ESB ad where the young fella (Alan Hughes) comes home after abandoning his mammy, and the local nite-club, for the bright lights of the big city.
And 16 years later, the Guinness advert that was shown for the first time in 2004, rarely fails to elicit a tear.
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Mal Stevenson, who oversaw the campaign at Irish International for Diageo, tells the Irish Independent: “What we wanted to achieve with it, and what I think all good Christmas advertising aspires to, is to be evocative and emotional.
“Trying to give the viewer that lump-in-the-throat moment should be a guiding principle and that can be done through imagery and music. I can’t stress enough, how important music is for cranking up the emotion.”
And for Douglas, Coca-Cola’s ‘Holiday Are Coming’ jingle remains a perennial classic.
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“Coca-Cola have simply owned Christmas, in the same way that Guinness owns rugby,” he notes.
“John Lewis has put a bit of a dent in that, but their association with Christmas is still pretty incredible. To me, the sound of those bells in that ad gets me every time.”
