John Lewis Christmas ad: How the cost of living crisis changed the battle for best festive advert
It might barely be November, but the battle for the best Christmas advert is already in full flow, with John Lewis launching its festive offering today.
And while they might be a staple of our Christmas diet now – as much a tradition as pigs in blankets or carol singers – the hype around festive adverts wasn’t always such a big part of the calendar.
Today’s clip from John Lewis comes a week after Asda revealed their Christmas ad, which used classic footage from the 2003 film Elf, and hot on the heels of festive clips from Tesco, Argos, Morrisons and Aldi.
But with food bills rising, surging energy bills, mortgage hikes and reports of Britons cutting back ahead of the festive season, retailers have a difficult sales pitch to make this year.
A topic that is ‘so much bigger than Christmas’
John Lewis used their 90 seconds to shine a spotlight on an “often overlooked issue” – children in care.
The Beginner – set to a cover of Blink 182’s All the Small Things by US artist Mike Geier – shows a man as he struggles painfully to master skateboarding in the build-up to Christmas.
Viewers are left questioning the motive behind his perseverance until the final scene, when a social worker arrives with young teenager Ellie, who has arrived at her new foster home carrying her skateboard.
Kate Hardcastle, a consumer expert and chief executive of Insight with Passion, told Sky News: “Getting the tone of voice was really important for this year, and it was probably quite guessable it was going to be around corporate social responsibility because how can you do anything other else right now?
“But this is an incredibly fragile topic and needs handling with care.”
The ad was created with input from partner charities Action for Children and Who Cares? Scotland.
Alongside its longer-term work providing apprenticeship opportunities within the John Lewis Partnership for people leaving care, the retailer said it would make donations of Christmas decorations, food and gifts.
Ms Hardcastle said: “I would never say it missed the mark because the topic matters so much to me and I think any awareness is important.
“But I think the topic is much bigger than a Christmas advert and that’s because our care system support is needed 365 days a year, not just for Christmas.”
The ad is almost entirely devoid of product placement except for two brief glimpses of the retailer’s Lewis Bear toy.
But consumers can still purchase a number of products linked to the story including the £30 bear, £19 Lewis Bear pyjamas, a £5 Lewis Bear tote bag and a Rampage Skateboard for £34.99, with 25% of the sales going to the two affiliated charities.
The retail giant declined to reveal its budget for the ad.
How John Lewis changed the Christmas game
In the early 2000s, adverts were filled with as “many products as you could find” because “every frame costs money, so you want to show as much product as possible”, said Ms Hardcastle
This was seen with Marks and Spencer, who ruled the roost for years with their product-heavy offerings.
But in 2011, John Lewis changed the game with The Long Wait, a story of a young boy waiting desperately to give his mum a Christmas present.
Dr Hanlon told Sky News: “John Lewis did it differently. They told a story, rather than saying ‘here are the products, please buy these’.
“It is a classic marketing technique, it is telling a story, and it takes us back to that childhood notion of storytelling and it’s a comfortable place to be.”
And from there the battle for best Christmas advert, as it is know it today, began.
How to sell during a cost of living crisis
But as Christmas approaches this year, almost half (48%) of Brits have said they are planning to cut down on purchases – including festive activities and gifts – to save money, according to a report from Barclaycard.
Of these consumers, six in 10 will be spending less on gifts for family and friends, 44% will cut back on festive food and drink, including turkey and mulled wine, and two-fifths will curb their spending on Christmas parties and socialising.
Ms Hardcastle said John Lewis made the right choice picking a lower-priced toy as their feature product – the £35 skateboard.
She said: “This understands where people are right now. If they had put a £200 product on there, there would have been an immediate backlash of ‘how are people meant to afford this?'”
Brands ‘played it safe’
Matt Bourn, from the Advertising Association, said: “It is clear that advertisers and their agency and media partners are sensitive to the mood of the nation, the importance of being together, gifting and helping people to celebrate despite the geopolitical issues impacting us all.”
But Dr Hanlon said most of this year’s adverts “fell flat”, which indicates brands “don’t want to demonstrate they are spending millions on an ad when people are wearing extra jumpers and not putting the heating on”.
“I don’t think this year was meant to be a year for an iconic advert,” added Ms Hardcastle.
But she said she understands why brands have played it safe: “To have got it wrong this year, you would have been as villainous as the queue-jumping scandal.
“I think everyone just wants to say, let this Christmas be kind, let this Christmas be safe.
“And that’s how we feel about Christmas this year ourselves. No one’s telling you, they’re going to do some massive flash thing.
“Everyone’s saying we just going to keep it simple. We’re just going to go back to basics, getting the family together, with fewer presents, maybe a bit less food, and the currency of the adverts fits in with that.”
Entertainment
Star of The Hills and Made In Chelsea says family’s homes have burnt down in LA wildfires
A reality TV personality known for appearing on shows like The Hills and Made In Chelsea has told Sky News her family have lost their homes in the California wildfires.
Stephanie Pratt, a model and the sister of fellow reality TV celebrity Spencer Pratt, lives in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, where more than 30,000 people have fled their homes due to the fast-moving blaze.
Los Angeles fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday that the Palisades fire is still growing and that “well over 5,000 acres” have been burnt.
At least two people have been killed so far, with around 1,000 buildings destroyed.
Follow latest: Two killed in LA wildfires
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House surrounded by flames during wildfire
The flames burning down a home in Los Angeles. Pic: AP
Some of the damage after the wildfire. Pic: AP
California governor Gavin Newsom earlier declared a state of emergency over the four wildfires in the south of the state.
Speaking to Sky News from London, an emotional Ms Pratt said: “It’s just so crazy, I had no idea what was happening.
“I talked to my dad yesterday and he said ‘The Palisades is burning’. He said that he was at my brother’s house on Chautauqua [Boulevard] and they were just watching the flames come.
“The firefighters came and said you got to leave.”
Former Made In Chelsea star Stephanie Pratt speaking to Sky News
Map showing wildfires in California.
‘I don’t know if my house is there’
Ms Pratt said her parents and brother Spencer, who like her starred in the reality series The Hills, were safely evacuated from the area.
However, the 38-year-old added that “all of the phones are disconnected” and that she doesn’t know what had happened to her home.
“I talked to my neighbour last night and she told me that [Palisades Charter High School] had burnt down, and that’s directly behind me, and so had Gelson’s Supermarket which is adjacent,” she said.
“I just can’t reach anyone to see if my house is okay. I just Googled it and it said that it’s destroyed and terrible… I don’t know if my house is there.”
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Reality TV personality Stephanie Pratt in 2010. Pic: Reuters
‘This is where they raised their kids’
When she asked her dad about Spencer, 41, who is married to 38-year-old Heidi Montag – another co-star of The Hills – Ms Pratt said he told her “I’ve never seen him like this”.
“I’m assuming he’s just completely catatonic,” she added. “We don’t care about the material things or anything like that, but this was their family home.
“This is where they raised their two little kids.”
Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2008. Pic: Reuters
The Palisades fire is one of five blazes currently burning in southern California – evacuation orders were in place on Tuesday in Altadena after another fire, called the Eaton fire, started near a nature preserve.
A third blaze, called the Hurst fire, also ripped through Sylmar in the north of the city.
And according to the state department Cal Fire, two more blazes – the Woodley fire in Los Angeles and Tyler fire in Riverside – broke out on Wednesday.
Two School Of Rock co-stars, who met at the age of 10, have got married.
Caitlin Hale and Angelo Massagli, who played Marta and Frankie respectively in the 2003 classic alongside Jack Black, tied the knot in New York on Saturday.
The couple brought some of the original cast of the film, which centres on a pretend substitute teacher turning a group of musically gifted school children into a rock band, together to celebrate their nuptials.
Posting on Instagram, Hale, 33, shared various images of the day, including a photobooth picture with a handful of their former cast mates.
The former actress, who now works as a sonographer, wrote under the post: “Special thank you to everyone who contributed to an unforgettable day!”
Caitlin Hale (middle) with Maryam Hussan and Jack Black. Pic: Andrew Schwartz/Paramount/Scott Rudin Prods/Mfp/New Century/Sor Prods/Kobal/Shutterstock
Rivkah Reyes, who played bass player Katie in the film, also posted about the wedding, sharing a video on TikTok.
The clip, set to Stevie Nicks’s Edge Of Seventeen, included cameos from Brian Falduto, who played Billy, Joey Gaydos Jr, who played Zack, and Aleisha Allen, who played Alicia, among others.
The use of the song was a nod to one of the scenes from the film where Black and Joan Cusack, who plays headteacher Rosalie Mullins, sing the song in a bar.
“Celebrating the marriage of Caitlin & Angelo with my forever fam #schoolofrock #wedding,” Reyes wrote alongside the video, which showed them all dancing together.
After appearing together in the film the only contact Hale and Massagli had was through a WhatsApp chat set up with the entire cast, according to The New York Times.
The pair then both left show business and coincidentally reconnected while studying in schools in Florida.
Massagli, 32, who now works as a lawyer for TikTok, according to The Times, told the paper the familiarity they both had due to working together when they were younger “cut through some of those early relationship hurdles”.
The couple got engaged in June 2023.
UK music sales hit a 20-year high of £2.4bn in 2024, helped by pop megastar Taylor Swift’s latest album, and driven by streaming and the vinyl revival, figures show.
Revenues from recorded music reached an all-time high, more even than at the peak of the CD era, according to annual figures from the digital entertainment and retail association ERA.
Total consumer spending on recorded music – both subscriptions and purchases – topped the previous record of £2.2bn in 2001, ERA said.
Noah Kahan performing during the Soundside Music Festival in September. Pic: AP
Takings from streaming services including Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon rose by 7.8% to a little over £2bn.
Almost £200m was spent on vinyl albums, an annual uplift of 10.5%, while CD album revenues were flat at just over £126m.
Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was the biggest-selling album of the year, aided by her record-smashing worldwide Eras tour.
More than 783,000 copies were bought, nearly 112,000 of them on vinyl – making it 2024’s biggest-selling vinyl album.
The biggest single of the year was Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, generating the equivalent of 1.99 million sales.
ERA chief executive Kim Bayley said 2024 was “a banner year for music, with streaming and vinyl taking the sector to all-time-high records in both value and volume.
Ms Bayley called it the “stunning culmination of music’s comeback which has seen sales more than double since their low point in 2013. We can now say definitively – music is back.”
Despite the increasingly strong performance by the British music industry, artists are said to be receiving less money.
Experts have said the musicians make less than people would think because of the role of streaming – platforms do not normally pay artists directly and divide any owed payments among the rights holders of songs.
Music revenues grew by 7.4% in 2024, while video rose by 6.9%, and games fell by 4.4%, according to preliminary figures.
Subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV grew by 8.3% to £4.5bn – almost 90% of the sector’s revenues.
Deadpool & Wolverine was the biggest-selling title of the year, with sales of 561,917 – more than 80% of them sold digitally.
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Despite the games sector’s 4.4% decline last year, it remains nearly twice as large as the recorded music business.
Full game sales saw a drop-off with PC download-to-own down 5%, digital console games down 15% and boxed physical games down 35%, in favour of subscription models which grew by 12%.
EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as Fifa was once again the biggest-selling game of the year, generating 2.9 million unit sales, 80% of them as digital formats.
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