The Big Christmas Adverts: Judged.

Trapeze Media team member Sarah casts a weary and cynical eye over some of this year’s festive advert offerings.

[Please be warned that Sarah is self described intersectional feminist killjoy.]

Argos

Argos > At first watch, this is a sweet and family centric advert. Watched as the full length version, we can see this is ticking some important boxes: a diverse family, a group that initially does not go over the magic number of 6, an upbeat bit of musical shmaltz (that isn’t a done-to-death song), and a sausage dog.

I think we can all respond to the enthusiasm and excitement they’re trying to show here. I enjoyed the nostalgia-provoking circling of the desired item in the catalogue as that was something I did as a kid. 

The family bubble of 6 was well arranged, with mixed race parents (Black mum, white dad), the sibling of the twins, and grandpa (Black- the mum’s dad). This makes sense because if we’re filtering this through some mainstream assumptions about relationships with parents, if kids are emotionally closer to their mums then it’s reasonable to expect they’re closer to their maternal grandparents. I’m pretty sure there’s a horrible corner of the internet pointing out that the dad is the only white person in that advert until we see his mum, and what that means about society in general. 

What follows is something problematic, and then something that I understand as sensible, as someone who works in marketing. 

One of the magic tricks is to make grandpa into someone selling snacks in the auditorium the front room has morphed into. I wouldn’t be so against it if they’d done that to the white grandma too, or instead of (which dovetails well with the grandma trope of them constantly trying to feed their family), only that wasn’t the case. I’m not suggesting that they’re making a subliminal point about a black man of a certain age only being suitable as the help and not family, I’m just saying that for an advert so clearly cast with racial sensitivity in mind, this seems like a careless bit of storyboarding from the production team.

This moment is followed by something understandable; white grandma from her balcony, gets singled out for a magic trick. This will make a great standalone excerpt advert, content atomisation at its finest, for use during daytime TV during the airing of programmes deemed to have particularly white audiences. 

Don’t look at me that way, it does get that granular.

While we’re talking about grandma, I’m not convinced an Apple watch is a sensible allocation of a £300+ gift for a character that reads as unlikely to use it (flagrant ageism alert), but in this instance it’s about demonstrating modernity and relevance. Which is also why there’s a sausage dog: it’s now a shorthand for modern parents who use Instagram.

Coca-Cola

Coke > one of the whitest Christmas adverts in more ways than one, this reads to me as a fun but entirely unnecessarily long. Like, ‘you have to spend the budget this year or you won’t get it again next year’ long. It’s a bit of a tear jerker, but I’m too confused to really have much of an emotional response to i

What does it mean, ‘give something only you can give’? Well, if you dig a little, they expand on it with, ‘Be it in person, over an awkward video call, or just a quick message, making time for the ones you love is what makes Christmas truly the most special time of year, no matter how you do it.’

I don’t think they’ve really considered the financial hardships a lot of families are facing, more so this year than usual. Are they trying to say ‘it’s ok if you’re broke this Christmas?’ I tell you what, the first thing I would cut back on is branded soda if that was the case. Patronising bastards, they’re been a central part of the message about how Christmas is about Santa and gift giving for a long time.

This advert for me hammers home the importance of not having Santa as front and centre of the Christmas experience in your family. Why would Santa bring this family a new XBox but not this one? It’s nothing to do with Santa. Structural inequality reinforcement.

Pepsi

Pepsi > instantly reminding me of the Cors Light advert series that thinks it’s cooler than it is, this is the advert equivalent of the teenager who is too cool for Christmas. 

Unfortunately, most of those teens aren’t the ones doing the Christmas shopping, so unless they can whinge at the powers that be, or those powers are desperately trying to be hip, it’s unlikely to be effective. This smacks of more community signalling for the sake of it rather than actually wanting to do a Christmas advert. 

Yes, it’s cool, yes it’s rebellious, yes it features a female musician of colour so I’m totally here for that… But it’s instantly forgettable, not even the grime rap soundtrack will stay in your head.

Yeah, I think that’s all I’ve got on that one. No wait- you should look at the Cors Light Advert. The track is bangin’.

Amazon

Amazon > With more money than god, I find it amusing they’re seeing fit to bless us lowly consumers with a Christmas advert- and to my absolute surprise, it was a favourite.

To my not absolute surprise, they’ve clearly thrown a lot of money at this project, but I’m pleased to report that not only was the star of the racially diverse cast a famous woman of colour (French ballerina Taïs Vinolo), but the director was also a famous female director of colour, Melina Matsouka, who has directed music videos for Beyoncé’s Formation, Rihanna’s We Found Love, and 2019 film Queen & Slim.

After watching it again, I found this to be a distracting watch for details as it’s UK pitched, but it doesn't all line up for me. 

I’m reasonably confident that most apartment blocks in the UK that the advert implies she lives in aren’t that spacious and with parquet flooring. Check out the buildings in the external practicing shots. However, my understanding of the American schooling system is that uniforms are generally not a thing that gets worn. It certainly looked a lot like my secondary school uniform. It’s the tiled flooring shot and the invites in letterboxes that tells me it was probably partially shot in France. Which makes a load of sense when you think about it. Come the finale, I’m convinced. There’s too much wide open space for it to be UK. 

I thought the finishing strap line of ‘the show must go on’ was initially quite emotive, but after a few times through I feel down right annoyed, and a little jealous, that they’re found a way of conveying the ‘keep calm and carry on message’ in combination with ‘it’s ok, you can keep shopping with us’.

John Lewis

John Lewis seem to have missed the mark this season, despite the cool and covid-production-friendly multi-style animations. The name ‘Give a Little Love’ made me think of this wonderful and heartwarming song from Bugsy Malone, and frankly I prefer the messaging from it because it’s less ‘shopping with us this season is a kind act’ and more ‘be kind’. Also it’s catchier. Plus it’s a great film. I’d definitely rather be watching it than this advert in particular.

However there are nice points to this. We’ve seen a marked commitment to more diverse casting from the other adverts and this one is no exception.

Even thought the sum of it’s parts was underwhelming, there were a lot of nice little details in this advert. The snowman ‘walking’ down the street in the background with shoes The brief section that was drawn and coloured with felt-tip pens, a very, very clever bit of nostalgia-provoking low fi tech. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit where the man who’s laughing at the joke is on the tube in a silly cracker hat and surprisingly cool leather jacket. 

Seriously, this bit called out to me immediately, not just because at time of writing noone is quite sure what Christmas is going to look like, but because it’s a very modern and specific setting by comparison. Also, even though the tube is presumably empty except for him, he’s not wearing a mask, which has been mandatory for some time now. I don’t think John Lewis can claim time frame shenanigans, because the final bit of animation very specifically and carefully features an NHS worker in a hijab on a bus fixing broken glasses with a sticker.

Disney

Disney - I’ll be honest, I only watched this accidentally (thanks, auto cue YouTube) as it didn’t occur to me that Disney would do an advert. As with the case of Amazon, they don’t need to as they’re slowly inserting their tendrils into the world’s media consumption, and it’s not like that’s stopping any time soon. I suppose, again like Amazon, it’s more like a Christmas card because a) they can, and b) it’s one band wagon they’re expected to jump on.

It’s a well-calculated heart warming tear-jerker, with your predictably lovely music involving a solo vocal and a swelling piano, and it will tick all the boxes for classic Disney fans. I was interested in the representation of not only a family of colour, but also the implication that it was not the normal family unit so boringly trotted out this time of year.  It’s implied the generational family member between grandmother and daughter is no longer around, and the only man involved in the narrative is the one gifting the Mickey Mouse at the start. There’s potentially  going to be a lot of lonely grandparents this Christmas so to have their relationship front and centre of the advert is really rather lovely. 

And while I’m on the subject, HOW a plush toy that is over 60 years old has managed to stay so relatively unscathed is beyond me. Never one to miss a tie-in, there is of course a toy Mickey soft toy ‘inspired by the advert’, which I predict will not age as well as the one in the advert. (SPOILER: it’s a regular Mickey but with the ear stitches and a commemorative patch on his foot. That’s £27.50 please)

I am shocked to share with you that this made me cry. Yes, real cry, a go-and-get-the-tissues-and-try-to-not-disturb-my-housemat-on-a-zoom-call cry. I was so sure that grandma was going to get killed off and she reminds me a lot of my own beloved Nana who is no longer with us. I was emotional enough to feel tempted to read the comments! It is a long thread of applause for Filipino representation and the huge love of Christmas in the Philippines, and a lot of people admitting to being brought to tears. (That made me feel less of a big softy)