I can't do this any more. And I blame this muppet.
But would you look at that pants-shittingly scary bastard?
That’s not a face howling void in a cowl you want to wake up to at 3am is it? The nine foot tall embodiment of frozen death that the Jim Henson company put into their festive puppet show for children.
But I get the feeling the Muppet Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has visited me in the night. Because I can’t do the miserable ranty ad bastard thing any more. I’ve changed my ways.
I’ve got a rep as that miserable git who hates Christmas adverts. I’ve cultivated it. My video slagging off the Elton John Lewis ad, the train-wreck of a talk I did at the DMA about festive ads being shite, the annual blog post nitpicking the seasonal supermarket TV ads…
But this year? I’ve changed my ways. I will keep the spirit of Christmas in my heart now and all days. I won’t stomp around, casting murderous glances at carrots and raccoons and venus flytraps1. I’m a changed man. Oh thank you kind spirit, thank you!
It’s the only answer. Either that or the pressure of the current economic situation’s caused marketers to abandon trendy London-centric cause-based marketing for good old-fashioned message-led sales.
Whether it’s down to spectral interference or economic pressure, I found it really hard to find a truly bad Christmas advert this year. But I still managed it.
Humbug!
Christmas Adverts 2023 - The Bad - Fevertree’s Night Before Christmas
Let joy be unconfined. This advert currently clogging up the radio and podcast airwaves isn’t available anywhere for me to link to as a standalone.
You can, however, find it around 16 minutes into this podcast.
Mariella Frostrup reads a lifeless parody of Twas The Night Before Christmas. If you’ve heard it, you’ll have nodded as soon as you saw the subheading.
But if not, let me share the opening lines and explain why’s it so, so bad. It’s not just because it doesn’t scan at all.
Twas the night before Christmas when all through our home
Friends, were waiting for drinks, at the party we’d thrown.
With an Espresso Martini mixer, from Fever Tree.
All you need to add, is the vodka, you see.
It’s overplayed. Every single copywriter has written a lifeless parody of A Visit From St. Nicholas (Twas The Night Before Christmas). It’s the most obvious idea anyone ever has. I wrote it as a blog post for an SEO company back in 2008. I did it again, as a self-referential joke, in 2021. Ryan Renolds’s Aviation Gin did it three years ago! Gin and tonic, with the same exhausted concept.
It’s irritating. Mariella Frostrup is the perfect voice for a luxury brand. Her delivery brings to mind Peter Serafinowicz reading the shipping forecast in that episode of Black Books. But she sounds so forced trying to read a parody, it jars with the established identity.
It buries the brand’s key strength. When you’ve heard a hundred shit versions of a poem, when it’s being delivered poorly, and when you’re being interrupted for a podcast or radio ad, you start tuning out. You tune out well before Fever Tree’s amazing message, which I honestly think is the best line running today.
“If 2/3rds of your drink is the mixer, mix with the best.”
Honorable mention: That Morrison’s oven glove ad nearly made the cut. It could’ve run for any supermarket at all. It could’ve run at any time of the year if you tweak Christmas dinner for Sunday lunch. It’s not even got Christmassy music! And much like Fever Tree, it’s irritating and off-message. What’ve singing gloves got to do with being a bigger version of my local grocer?
That’s the good and the bad covered. So that means all that’s left next week is the ugly.
Get your predictions in. What’s the ugliest piece of festive advertising this year?
Yes. Yes I fucking well will. You give it a week. That flytrap is in my sights.