Nothing says Christmas like having a knife twisted in your guts
Christmas 1993 was still better than this turgid ad spot.
The worst Christmas I’ve ever had was Christmas 1993. It was shite. I didn’t eat any Christmas dinner, my brother opened all my presents, and I spent most of it asleep.
Oh, and I’d nearly died four days earlier.
My appendix burst on December 21st that year, and it took doctors hours to hoover all the septic gunge out of my abdominal cavity. Apparently, I might not have seen New Year.
I would’ve spent Christmas in a hospital bed because I was still so feverish, because my masterplan plan of watching David Attenborough’s “Life in the Freezer” and imagining I was a penguin had failed. What can I say? I was eight.
My quick-thinking dad came to the rescue though, and made me stand outside in the freezing cold long enough to cool me down enough to fool the doctor.
The only food I could keep down was crumpets with a bit of marmite on them, and I couldn’t move enough to open my presents so my little brother did it for me. Then my cousin set a high score on my new Megadrive game (Sonic Spinball, if you’re interested) that I was unable to beat for the next four years.
Like I said, shite Christmas.
There’s nothing Christmassy at all about stomach surgery, marmite crumpets and hedgehog-themed video game pinball. It doesn’t feel festive. It felt bizarre. Tacked on. A strange mis-step that pulled me out of a wonderful time of year while everyone else was having fun.
Still not as weird, un-Christmassy or downright fucking dour as whatever the fuck this is though.
Christmas Adverts 2023 - The Ugly - Snapper
Over the past two weeks, we’ve covered everything a Christmas ad should do. It needs to feel unmistakeably Christmassy. It needs to be relevant to people’s lives. And it needs to shift product.
So please, tell me, the fuck’s this trying to do?
Kid grows a minging looking carnivorous plant, his mum and nan get the hump, it gets kicked outside and that makes said plant sad. Then the lad feeds it a present. Cue Daily Mail outrage about the erasure of men from the public sphere, and a shrug and a sigh from the buying public.
This could be an advert for literally anything in the world at any time of year, and it’d work exactly as well (ie not at all).
But the kicker, the absolute kicker is that self-referential tagline of “Let your traditions grow” (in the same festive block capital sans serif you’d see from an undertaker, no less). It’s a reference to the fact that the John Lewis advert is apparently a Christmas tradition now, despite the fact nobody outside of adland cares - or that this spot is as festive as gut surgery.
Here’s my pitch for next year’s John Lewis advert.
It’s a balmy day in August. A load of preening ad execs pick their noses with golden pencils as one smarmily writes “ferret with a broken arm on a pogo stick” on a whiteboard.
Another writes “Enya covering the Timewarp” below it.
The meeting descends into a masturbatory pile of self-congratulationary hand stuff as one junior copywriter walks out, shaking her head.
She walks into a nearby a John Lewis and looks at the presents she can buy for her family members. A warm smile crosses her face as we, the audience, imagine the joy of giving.
We fast forward to December.
There’s a montage of delighted family members opening perfect gifts as Slade’s Merry Xmas Everyone plays in the background. Our junior copywriter smiles as she opens a framed picture of John Lewis’ sales figures actually going up for once.
Fade out to the line…
“We sell Christmas presents, you know?”
You can have that, Mr Lewis, for much less than the however many million quid you spaffed up the wall on “Snapper.”
Honorable mention: That coal-hearted M&S advert that abandons their message of affordable luxury for a general feeling of Christmas being shit because your family and friends are irritating bastards that want to have fun. Happy fucking Christmas, eh?
That’s your festive round-up done.
The good, the bad and the ugly.
Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.