Are Christmas ads still as engaging?

As soon as the clock strikes 12am on the 1st of November, nothing is 'too early' when it comes to Christmas anymore. Infact, it almost brings up a lot of anixety with the amount of things you need to get done before the big day! 

Christmas is a time for family, friends, being cosy, drinking hot chocolate and eating everything in sight....

So with that said, when I am snuggled up in bed watching TV, drinking a hot cup of tea with some biscuits, and a Christmas advert comes on it immediately will make me smile and get excited. 

Christmas is prime time for marketing experts to come up with fresh new ways to promote brands using the feel good emotions that are typically associated with Christmas. 

The Coca Cola 'The Holidays Are Coming' adverts are also always a favourite of mine and make me think of when I was younger at Christmas time, and how excited I used to get seeing that advertisement. 

For me a Christmas advert has to produce that feel good feeling in me, it has to bring up many different emotions and give me a sense that the advert actually means something and is trying to bring awareness to a certain situation. 

But with all that said, are Christmas ads still pulling at our heart strings like they usually did? I have been watching some of this years Christmas advertisements and I found I didn't have as much of an emotional response to them. They still made me feel excited for this Christmas coming, but I found they didn't make me think of previous Christmas experiences or make me feel that they had a sense of reason behind them other than to promote the brand. 

Christmas adverts that show a friendship are my favourites. And of course the brand that does this (and also all Christmas adverts) the best is...John Lewis. Some of my favourite John Lewis adverts are the 2013 'The Bear and the Hare', 2014 'Monty the Penguin' and of course, possibly the most emotional of them all 'The Man on The Moon, which discussed the issue of loneliness in old age, especially around Christmas time.

However, a new study has shown that John Lewis ads are not as engaging as they used to be. 

Some brands seem to have taken a different approach away from the heart tugging adverts from previous years, For example, Argos 'The Book of Dreams' Ad shows a father and his daughter drumming along to a 1980's power ballad, Walkers have Mariah Carey bringing back an old classic Christmas song and TK Maxx showing a brave skier giving out Christmas presents. 

All of which less emotional, but still great! 

To me, I have found these kinds of adverts to be less engaging, I have watched them all once and I can't see myself ever going out of my way to watch them again. Whereas in previous years I would search a Christmas ad up on youtube to rewatch it. 

Maybe it's the fact that those emotional, heart tugging adverts have become the norm and what people expect, but with the ever growing market and brands fighting to be the best Christmas advert, maybe they have turned to a different approach in order to stand out. This seemed to work well with the public for the Argos 2019 Christmas advert. People enjoyed that it was different.

With all of that said, I still have some favourites this year:

M&S Christmas Food 

Amazon 'Everybody Needs Somebody to Love' 



Visa 'Where You Shop Matters'