The idea for this 2024 Christmas advert collection was two-fold. Collect and reflect on the European ad industries most creative period of work, which tends to happen at this time of the year. In advertising at this time of the year, we’re usually head-down getting things done until the middle of December, so it made sense to pull it all together.
Aldi
Aldi do Christmas adverts right. I don’t mean the the creative is amazing, but they get basics right. It builds on previous campaigns linked by Kevin the Carrot. It has engaging storytelling. It’s the communications strategists Christmas ad rather than the height of creative excellence. Consistency, fluent objects stacking up its brand building power to reinforce memory structures about what Aldi is at Christmas.
Amazon
Amazon’s Midnight Opus was designed to be used in the US as well as Europe so it has more of a ‘holidays’ than Christmas vibe to it. But the emotional storytelling is top-notch.
ASDA
If Aldi is the communications strategist’s Christmas ad, ASDA’s is the copy-based creative’s Christmas ad. It’s based on the kind of wordplay that fuelled the likes of the comparethemarket meerkat.
Barbour
Leaning into Barbour’s favoured status with the rural set in the UK, the Shaun the Sheep collaboration makes perfect sense.
Boots
Boots 2024 advert was something I had only ever seen in a cut down 15 or 30 second spot centred around ‘slaying’ scene in the advert. In totality it made a lot more sense and was based on some nice insights. The advert implies that Boots is expecting to be the destination for last-minute present shopping – which puts it in an interesting cross-segment competitive space alongside the local off-licence as much as department store beauty counters.
Christian Dior
Christian Dior’s Ball of Dreams is as visually opulent as you’d expect from the luxury brand. Its vibe is very similar to the 2022 Christmas Christian Dior advert The Atelier of Dreams implying a certain amount of campaign consistency. While I won’t swing around on a chandelier I do like Dior’s Eau Sauvage.
Disney
Disney’s 2024 Christmas advert focuses on the brand’s core strength of storytelling. It manages to make the customer the hero, rather than leaning more heavily on its IP library too much.
JD Sports
JD Sports would find it hard to top last years Christmas ad that tapped into something deep in a working class Christmas. This year’s version is more like a fever dream of vignettes, definitely relatable but not the joyful apex of last years effort.
They are tapping into similar ideas about family that Tesco did, but taking it in a very different direction. It also represents a vision of an ‘imperfect’ Christmas, rather than the usual ideal.
John Lewis
John Lewis has high expectations on their adverts. Their 2024 Christmas advert ‘The Gifting Hour’ captures the generosity and self-imposed stress of giving.
Lidl
Lidl’s 2024 Christmas advert A Magical Christmas has a nice twist on the Christmas ad with it leaning into Lid’s Toy Bank to help local communities. It looks like they did a pan-European ad to give it a Christmas card feel.
M&S Christmas Food
M&S keep consistent in their ‘this isn’t just food, it’s M&S Christmas food’ in their voice over harking back to when Nigella Lawson used to do their intros. This is more interesting in production than the vintage food porn M&S historically used.
Morrisons
Morrisons uses oven gloves as fluent objects, but the benefits would only be appreciated if it is repeated as a creative motif in future campaigns a la Aldi’s Kevin the Carrott. As an ad it could have been screened anytime in the past forty years and not stood out, its curiously atemporal in nature.
Sainsburys
Sainsbury’s draws on the intellectual property rights of Roald Dahl’s books with an appearance of The BFG. It’s a big production but could it have worked harder creatively?
Shelter
Homeless charity Shelter moved beyond the usual poverty porn of NGOs in their World of Their Own film and humanises their clients. The creative and storytelling are both on point. If this doesn’t win awards next year; it’s probably only because they didn’t enter.
Tesco
#FeedYourChristmasSpirit is a solid highly emotive Christmas ad. It challenges what many younger British people feel about family such as tightly knit house share friends like the 1990s era show This Life and its American counterpart Friends.
Tesco pulls it back to traditional familial ties and memorable moments that home baking creates.
Vodafone UK
Vodafone makes an interesting play on its heritage to differentiate itself from the likes of Three, EE, and the mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). From a brand perspective, it’s the last network standing. Creatively, they’ve done a good job of incorporating emotion, which has led to strong performance in System 1 testing.
Interesting that they didn’t have a Roman Kemp-fronted advert, which would have been more consistent with the rest of the creative that they’ve ran this year.
The cynic in me suspects that this ad could also be a way for the marketing team to pre-position themselves ahead of political manoeuvring for roles, should Vodafone UK and Three UK merge. This would likely be a first step in enabling their owners to exit the UK’s low-growth, financially challenging market.
Waitrose
Waitrose put a greater focus on the product with its dramatisation of ‘Sweet Suspicion’ a minor Enid Blyton-esque mystery. Clever, but is it emotionally engaging?
Honourable mentions
Aldi Australia
Aldi Australia offers a very localised perspective of the Christmas experience. Part work-of-art; part comedy.
Deutsche Telekom
Deutche Telekom looks at the higher calling of telecoms rather than the way its knit into our daily lives with its 2024 Christmas advert. The production is beautiful. It’s a direction that Three or Vodafone could have taken given their global footprint, but Deutsche Telekom manage to carry it off.
McDonald’s Philippines
This 2024 Christmas ad for the Filipino part of McDonald’s features the local chairman George Yang and Jose Mari Chan – a well-known singer-songwriter. The tonality and twist in the tale are so well done.
If you like this, you might want to compare and contrast it with Chinese New Year advertising from across Asia.