A celebration of Christmas marketing magic
By: Ben Webb
Christmas ads are everywhere, with the world’s brands – from chocolatiers to carmakers and perfumers to supermarkets – tapping into the unique magic of the festive season. The intrinsic proposition of a brand is important in every campaign, but at this time of year, it’s often secondary to the wonders of Santa, sleighbells, and snow, as well as family, nostalgia, and giving rather than receiving.
In the UK, for example, the Christmas ad season was kick-started – as it is every year – by the department store John Lewis, which has a long history of spreading quirky magic with classic ads such as Buster the Boxer and Monty the Penguin. This year’s film, produced by leading creatives Saatchi & Saatchi, Where Love Lives, studiously avoids schmaltzy family stereotypes. It does, though, cleverly highlight a strong father-son bond.
To the sound of club classic ‘Where Love Lives’ by Alison Limerick, we go back in time and see moments such as the father clubbing or holding his baby son. The song transforms into songwriter Labrinth’s slower version as we join the present, Christmas Day, and the moving moment the father opens his gift from his son… the original treasured vinyl record. The result is moving, tender, and surprising. In addition, to support the Christmas theme, limited edition records of the two tracks are on sale with all profits going to Building Happier Futures, a charity supporting people brought up in care.
The use of magic in Christmas advertising reminds me of a recent talk by Rory Sutherland, the marketing guru and vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Group. “Rationality is the gold standard of human thinking,” he said. “I would argue in our business, rationality is the bronze standard. It’s okay. You won’t get fired. You won’t get blamed. The silver standard is ingenuity. And the gold standard is magic. Complete magic.”
The preference for the measurable over the imaginative, however, is often hard-wired into most businesses. Has this created an imbalance? As marketers, are we too reliant on using objective ways to solve problems simply because they are measurable? Conversely, should we have more trust in subjective alternatives that are almost completely unmeasurable… like magic?
We can’t escape rationality. The numbers and measurements matter. ROI will always be king when it comes to justifying or assessing marketing campaigns. But adding a special psychological ingredient – that sprinkle of fairy dust – is what turns the average or very good into the wonderful and brilliant.
The odds are stacked against the creatives. Many imaginative ideas help build brands and create long-lasting benefits, but marketers aren’t allowed to claim the credit. Today, only the last quarter’s revenue is counted by the finance department. And creative teams – does the terminology already build a certain distrust? – also have to present their ideas to their more rational colleagues for approval. Imagine if the rationalists had to sell their numbers-based thinking. Measurable, yes, but a little dull and unambitious perhaps?
Abracadabra… the wizardry of being different
Magic can mean thinking differently. In a famous TED talk, Sutherland once questioned the logic behind the £6bn upgrade to Eurostar, the train link between the UK and Paris, which cut 30 minutes off the travel time. His alternative solution? Pay the world’s top male and female supermodels to walk up and down the train, handing out free bottles of Château Petrus to passengers. “You’d have saved yourself £5bn,” he said. “And the passengers would’ve asked for the trains to be slowed down.”
Sutherland is a fan of the Walt Disney dictum: the more you are like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, making you unique. It sums up the benefit of being different. The rational numbers game is about running in the same race as all your competitors, which creates lots of copies and sameness but few originals. Magical thinking can create special, lasting moments…
… like the sight of a festive kilt-wearing Harrison Ford playing a fan of the whisky Glenmorangie. Or Bryan Cranston’s ‘Cran-Puss,’ a Grinch-like character in the Christmas advert for cranberry giant Ocean Spray. It’s a big budget extravaganza filled with puns – Christmas is ‘cran-celled’ – as the Breaking Bad star destroys the spirit by stealing the cranberry sauce and cocktails and delivering a terrible karaoke performance.
Yes, it might not be everyone’s idea of a Christmas cracker, but it’s certainly different, and it looks as though the creatives have had some fun with the campaign. At this festive time of year, let’s toast marketing teams and the magic of helping brands tell their amazing stories.
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