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Insight
November 14, 2024
The festive season seems to arrive sooner each year, almost overlapping with Halloween at this point. You’d just as well make your costume Christmas-themed next year to get into the spirit ahead of time.
Red noses aside, the Christmas ads are upon us. Unlike previous years many audiences might not be seeing these ads for the first time on terrestrial TV. OTT services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video are increasingly becoming the format for people to watch at home, especially as most of these streaming services offer so much Christmas content.
Brands are competing to stay at the front of the consumers’ minds during the festive season, which means delivering their ads at the right time to the right audience is a top priority. Rather than solely focusing on the traditional TV ad, they are adopting a full digital advertising approach (web and streaming) to reach as many of their target audience as possible.
We’ve created a list of our top 12 Christmas ads this year, and some of the OTT service ad tech that helps deliver them. Read on to see the list and how these ads could go beyond broadcast to reach their intended audience.
1. Apple: Fuzzy Feelings
2. Morrisons: Nothing’s gonna stop us now
3. JD Sports: The bag for life
4. TK Maxx: Festive Farm
5. Royal Mail: In Good Hands
6. John Lewis, Snapper: The Perfect Tree
7. Coca-Cola: The World Needs More Santas
8. Charlie’s Bar Enniskillen
9. Aldi: Kevin the Carrot
10. M&S Food: say HELLO to Right & Left Mitten
11. Shelter: Good as Gold
12. KFC: Kentucky Fried Turkey for Christmas?
1. Apple: Fuzzy Feelings
Apple’s use of stop-motion animation alongside the relatable story of an unhappy employee and her boss is one of the most celebrated ads this year. It’s thoughtful and emotional, while not pushing Apple’s products front and centre.
Telling the story of a young lady and a seemingly difficult boss, she creates short stop-motion animated films using her phone in her spare time, to cope with her predicament. She subjects the character representing her boss to several increasingly unfortunate mishaps, like losing his coat, electrocuting himself with Christmas lights, and being knocked over by a car before falling into a river (ouch!).
Her boss eventually gives her handmade socks as a Christmas gift at work, and she later sees him sitting on his own in a busy restaurant that she’s passing by later that evening. When creating the next short film, she creates a little dog from the socks her boss gifted her and has the character receive the puppy as a gift in the film. The key message here is kindness, which many ads have tried to convey this season, but perhaps not as well as this one. Soundtracked by George Harrison, it’s a definite winner.
2. Morrisons: Nothing’s gonna stop us now
Most people can relate to the work involved in putting together a Christmas dinner with their family. It’s a common theme that’s been present in many ads over the years, but Morrisons take is an amusing one.
Tying together music with a simple concept nicely: oven gloves singing to Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now while Christmas dinners are prepared in typical household scenes. Special mention must go to the use of the line “put your hand in my hand” sung by the oven glove, which is then filled with a hand at 0:18.
3. JD Sports: The bag for life
Celebrating British youth culture and deviating from the usual tropes of turkey, open fires, and snow, JD Sports is celebrating 25 years of the iconic duffle bag this Christmas. It’s a refreshing take that’s a little closer to reality for many younger viewers, especially those experiencing the reality of inner-city life.
Featuring faces teens might be familiar with, including rappers Kano and Central Cee, the ad centres around the JD Sports bag and depicts young people from a variety of backgrounds. There are moments with family dinners, friends cycling together, parties, and romance. It’s great to see an alternative to the usual clichéd ads, which are far from the reality of most people’s lives.
Targeted advertising
The JD Sports ad stands out in this list as it strays from being a universally appealing paint-by-numbers Christmas ad. Delivering this ad solely to a TV audience wouldn’t be preferable as advertisers wouldn’t be able to clearly identify exactly who is watching. Delivering this ad to digital channels such as OTT streaming services means the intended audience can be more accurately targeted.
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4. TK Maxx: Festive Farm
Farm animals in knitwear. There’s not much else to say about it.
TK Maxx uses an alpaca, a gaggle of geese and a hedgehog dressed in their new outfits as they strut out of a barn. The alpaca wears a stylish turtleneck, which hopefully isn’t made from alpaca wool, even if it’s all computer-generated.
The message here is that designer goods can be had for less at TK Maxx, which makes sense given the budget constraints many consumers will be facing this Christmas. It’s a light-hearted ad with the universal appeal of animals, what’s not to like?
5. Royal Mail: In Good Hands
Many Christmas ads play on our emotions by highlighting the lives and experiences other people face during the festive period. Who better to highlight than the person delivering your post, during what is undoubtedly an exceptionally busy time of the year for them?
The verb “sonder” is used to describe the profound feeling of realising that everyone is constantly living a life as complex as your own, despite your lack of awareness of it. Ads like this give a peek through the window into these lives, which is why they’re so effective.
6. John Lewis, Snapper: The Perfect Tree
Few brands can deliver Christmas ads that are almost universally celebrated in the way that John Lewis has over the years. It’s become an expected part of the holiday season for the office kitchen small talk about the weather to be replaced by “Have you seen the John Lewis Christmas ad yet?”.
This year's ad had the public divided, however, with John Lewis taking a slightly more leftfield approach than their usual sentimental storytelling. It focuses on a giant living Venus flytrap called ‘Snapper’ grown as the pet of a young boy in a family, with a message of creating new traditions.
7. Coca-Cola: The World Needs More Santas
The impact of Coca-Cola and its advertising on Christmas can be measured by the fact that when you picture Santa Claus, he’s wearing red.
Single acts of kindness deliver the message of the ad, and that’s echoed in the soundtrack that “anyone can be Santa”. Rather than continuing with their iconic “Holidays are coming”, there’s a tip of the hat to this with the Coca-Cola truck lit up in the final frames of the ad.
8. Charlie’s Bar Enniskillen
Showing that you don’t need a huge budget to captivate people with your ad, this one comes from an independent bar in Enniskillen. Using just £700 and a dog, the ad went viral on social media, winning widespread praise.
The storytelling of the ad plays on the heartstrings by following an elderly man throughout a lonely day as he tries to connect with others, culminating in him meeting a young couple and their dog at Charlie’s Bar. It’s simple but effective and goes to show that you don’t need massive investment to create a great ad that connects with people.
9. Aldi: Kevin the Carrot
Perhaps one of the most foolproof approaches to a Christmas ad is for a brand to create a lovable mascot. That is what Kevin is for Aldi and has been for a few years now. Now that he’s returned for another year, the brand has created perhaps the most elaborate narrative so far.
Taking inspiration from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they’ve created their spin with Kevin and the Christmas Factory. I wonder how long that brainstorming session took. Coinciding with the release of this year’s biggest family movie, Wonka, it’s a smart move to play on something that will be familiar to children and adults alike.
10. M&S Food: say HELLO to Right & Left Mitten
M&S does Christmas ads exceptionally well, consistently delivering shots of food that will leave you salivating. This year is no different and uses some recognisable voices to bring life to the characters.
Featuring a fairy voiced by Dawn French, and some mittens brought to life by her, voiced by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, it’s both humorous and heartwarming. It’s a combination of storytelling with Christmas magic that will appeal to both children and adults.
11. Shelter: Good as Gold
Amongst the deluge of Christmas ads delivering warm and festive messages of kindness and giving, it can be easy to lose perspective of the basic necessities most of us have, that others might not.
Shelter delivers this message well in this ad, which starts light-hearted and fun before delivering an important message. Following a child who hears that if she’s “good as gold” she’ll get exactly what she wants this Christmas, and then proceeds to engage in kind deeds for different people before the big day. The ending shows that all she wanted for Christmas was a home for her family.
12. KFC: Kentucky Fried Turkey for Christmas?
Sometimes the simplest approach is the best, especially when responding to rumours. Using the numerous requests received from people on social media, KFC did a teasing but definite response to those asking for the brand to start offering turkey this Christmas. The final message is delivered humorously with the lines “We saw you. We heard you. And we ignored you. We’re sticking with chicken.”
OTT advertising (and why it’s important)
The way people watch TV has changed substantially in recent years, and as a result, so has the way advertising is delivered. OTT advertising refers to the ads being delivered ‘over the top’ of traditional means by being streamed through the internet rather than through a cable or satellite connection.
Research shows that 40.82% of 18 to 29-year-olds would be more likely to watch ad-supported content if the ads were personalised, meaning it’s no longer adequate to only advertise on T. Many brands now include digital advertising alongside TV, which includes websites and streaming content delivered to OTT services. Digital ad spending was projected to hit over $601 billion this year, with video taking an increasing chunk of that.
What is the difference between TV ads and OTT ads?
TV ads are traditionally delivered via broadcast through cable, aerial or satellite. OTT ads are delivered ‘over the top’, and streamed to devices through the internet.
As OTT ads are delivered through the internet, they can be targeted more accurately to reach the advertiser's desired viewer audience profile. This means that OTT ads offer a more personalised experience when compared to random TV ads that may not touch on any aspect of a viewer’s lifestyle.
TV ads are inserted at the point of playout before being broadcast. These ads need to go through a Clearcast approvals process, which is used to ensure UK broadcast ads comply with Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) rules. When broadcasters repurpose previously broadcasted video content to be delivered over the Internet, they usually can’t make money from the ads included in the original broadcast.
What is OTT vs CTV advertising?
OTT advertising refers to the delivery mechanism of the ads over the Internet rather than to traditional cable or satellite TV. OTT can refer to streaming on a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, or connected TVs. Connected TV (CTV) advertising refers to advertising that’s solely delivered to connected TVs.
What is programmatic OTT advertising?
Programmatic OTT advertising is the automated purchase and distribution of ad slots on OTT streaming services such as Netflix or Disney+. It’s a system which uses automated technology and algorithms to dynamically purchase and place ads in less than a second.
