Some people say it’s not really Christmas until you’ve heard Fairytale Of New York by The Pogues on the radio, had your first Quality Street of the season, or even put your tree up.
For others, it starts when those gorgeous, red Coca-Cola trucks haul ice-cold bottles through the snow to the tinkling sound of “The holidays are coming, the holidays are coming!” And that’s usually in early November now.
Yep, the festive season kicks off not with mince pies and mistletoe, but rampant consumerism, tinged with a glowy nostalgia that’s hard to resist. The chances are, you’ll still remember the Christmas adverts you watched on telly as a child, like the 1992 Yellow Pages ad where the little boy grabbed the giant, now defunct, book to stand on for a kiss under the mistletoe.
Or it might be the “magical place” ToysRUs one, that had as big a pull as the Argos catalogue at Christmastime.
Retailers have only ramped things up since the Nineties, with the John Lewis advert becoming one of the biggest telly moments of the winter, if not the year (remember The Man On The Moon, and the heart-breaking The Bear And The Hare?). The department store is back with its 2024 offering, The Gifting Hour, a tale of a woman racing through her memories to find the perfect gift for her beloved sister.
Although it’s not quite as hard-hitting as previous years have been – in fact, their Give Knowingly teaser about a pink cardigan has slightly more emotional heft – it’s still packed with nostalgia and not-too-gooey sentiment.
It’s pretty obvious why brands love silly season, and why it’s worth their while to go all out on a Christmas ad.
“There is the annual tradition to compare different retailers – so the competitive element drives visibility,” says Lucy Beresford, psychotherapist and spokesperson for the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). “And the ads are very, very emotional, so really tug at the heartstrings to make us connect emotionally in a feelgood way with each brand – because that drives brand loyalty and sales.”
Fair enough, but why do we so happily fall for the festive schmaltz every November? Sainsbury’s has literally nabbed Roald Dahl’s the BFG to front its campaign this year, you can’t mine childhood and the collective psyche much more than that!
“Different retailers will try to tap into different emotions each year, but the main themes are around either powerful relationship dynamics, so grandparent/grandchild, sister/sister, which are often to do with nostalgia and memory, sometimes feelings of loss/loneliness followed by new connections,” says Beresford.
“Or the feelgood sense of community, so family around a large dinner table or a community coming together, with feelings of gratitude, belonging, and hopefulness.
“We get hooked in because we are emotional creatures, and we are relational creatures – we come into this world physically joined to another human being and so being connected is our template. And the adverts present stories about relationships, which are really easy to follow and relate to.”
The success of the ads, when we sink into our sofas and reach for the tissues, comes down to how much we can see ourselves and our families in them. Beresford adds: “Because the stories are so relatable, highlighting emotions we have experienced, like love, loss, desire and wanting to belong, we feel as though the retailer really understands us, really gets us!”
