Best Christmas ads of 2021: 3 takeaways for winning ads

It nearly goes without saying that Christmas is a huge holiday in the UK — so much so that many brands set aside large budgets to spend on ads surrounding the holiday season.

As a consumer, it’s wonderful to see brands sending powerful messages and spreading the holiday cheer, but as a brand, this means there's a lot of pressure to make sure they stand out from the crowd (especially when everyone is willing to be a big spender). And this year was no different.

We decided to test the top holiday ads by big-spending retailers with lots to win this holiday season (and learn from how they performed).

In this article, we’ll share our breakdown of the best Christmas ads of 2021 that won the hearts and minds of the nation, as well as the three things we learned from the top performing ads.

Before we get into who the top performers are, here’s the full list of ads we tested and where you can watch them:

• Aldi "A Christmas Carrot"

• Amazon "Kindness, the greatest gift"

• Boots "Bags of Joy"

• John Lewis "Unexpected Guest"

• Lidl "Big on a Christmas you can ALWAYS believe in"

• M&S "Percy Pigmas"

• Sainsbury’s "A Christmas to Savour"

• Tesco “This Christmas, Nothing’s Stopping Us”

Out of all the ads we tested, the ads from Aldi, M&S, Tesco, and Boots performed extremely well, landing them in our top performing or best Christmas ads of 2021 category.

Aldi

Aldi’s ad performed exceptionally well and was the highest performing of the ads we tested on all key indicators. It scored above a norm of 694 UK ads on all the measures that matter, with the largest wins in Brand Consideration (whether they would consider your brand over another), Overall Appeal (A person’s overall like or dislike of an ad) and Brand Linkage (how well the ad fits with your brand).

This success reflects a powerful, emotive, fun and traditional story using the strength of the character and style that Aldi has consistently used over the last few Christmas holidays to make the ad memorable and the brand easily recognizable.

Here’s some of the things the audience enjoyed about the ad:

• “I loved it all. I loved the characters, the storyline, the animation, the narrative. It was brilliant and is probably going to be the nations favourite xmas ad again for abt the 5th year in a row.”

• “I liked when the spirit showed him around, all the wonderful things he saw. And at the end when he joined the carrot family. It makes it magical!”

• “I liked the cartoon nature of the characters, their endearing, lovely faces, their outfits and the general Christmas feeling portrayed by the advert.”

The other ads in our best Christmas ads of 2021 list still yielded great results but scored slightly lower on each of the key success metrics. To give you some insight into how the audience responded to these, here’s a few of the things respondents liked in the ads from our verbatim responses:

M&S

• “It had a warm, fun, festive feel. It took me back to my childhood, when I thought everything about Christmas was absolutely wonderful.”

• “The sense of magic.”

Tesco

It’s worth noting for this ad that while there has recently been some controversy surrounding it, we tested it with a general population before the coverage surfaced and found that a large portion of the audience had a positive response.

• “It was inviting and spirit lifting, as it was playing lots of jolly music and showed lots of happy occasions.” “I liked Santa having a covid passport, people having a good time.”

Boots

• “It was very sweet and showed the importance of giving and family.”

• “It looked magical! Truly displaying the spirit of Christmas.”

Once we received these results, and we dug deeper to search for any commonalities and key learnings we could take away. Here’s a breakdown of the top three things we learned:

With many retailers aware that consumers were starting to plan, spend and shop earlier this year, the majority of Christmas ads were released at the start of November, several weeks earlier than most years.

While not everyone may have been receptive to an early onslaught of Christmas ads, the vast majority of people responded positively to them even in the early weeks of November. There was a general sense that the ads were actually kicking off Christmas and getting them in the holiday mood.

Here’s what some of the respondents had to say:

• “It was fun and made you feel in the Christmas mood.”

• “I liked the Christmas love n magic, makes you feel warm inside.”

• “I loved that I could feel like it was Christmas time already.”

We also noticed several consistent themes throughout our “winning” ads.

For instance, magic, something so inherently connected to Christmas, was seen in M&S's ad with Percy Pig suddenly coming alive and experiencing the joy of Christmas for the first time (while also exploring the yummy food in the store).

Aldi’s Ebanana Scrooge showcased the same magic with food brought to life as characters sharing in the joy of Christmas, combined with the story of the holiday classic A Christmas Carol. And then there was the ad from Boots, which brought the magic of Christmas to life by introducing a mystical bag that seemed to be able to give the right gifts at the right time.

The theme of connection was another that supported success this year, perhaps not surprisingly given the importance of human connection at Christmas. This was found in the Tesco ad, where everyone was seen celebrating together (and the fact that they could celebrate together) especially after being unable to last year.

Also worth noting, the John Lewis ad, which told the story of a young boy who befriends an alien girl that crash landed on earth sharing with her some of the joy of Christmas. And bringing it a bit closer to reality, Amazon's ad also carried on with this theme, highlighting the importance of connection and caring for one another, especially during the pandemic when isolation has been such a concern.

But when we took a step back even further to look at our best Christmas ads of 2021 collectively, they seemed to have one major theme in common: the joy and tradition of sharing with one another.

Whether it be through the endless gifts the Boots bag seemed to hold, sharing experiences like Percy Pig’s first taste of real Christmas treats from M&S, or the uplifting story from Tesco of people working together against adversity to be together and share a wonderful Christmas, this theme was powerful throughout.

Each of these ads also included three main ingredients that helped land them into our best Christmas ads of 2021 category:

• Emotional connection: The power of emotion should never be underestimated in engaging people — and it has even greater importance at this time of year. The best ads made people feel uplifted, filled them with joy or took them on an emotional journey.

• Compelling storytelling: The stories were all so different yet all powerful in their own right. And more importantly, the stories left people feeling positive about the brands by being reminded of what the brand can offer to support a great, joyful Christmas.

• Clear connection to the brand: The best ads clearly cued the brand through bringing a distinctive asset to life (like Kevin the Carrot and Percy Pig) or portraying their brand as an enabler of the joy of Christmas (Tesco and Boots).

There are many factors that can go into creating a winning ad, and there’s no doubt that the competition and pressure to do so increases greatly at this time of year.

When we decided to run these tests, our main goal was to not only discover what the top performing or best Christmas ads of 2021 were, but also to get to the root of why. Why did they stand out to us? Why do we remember them? What were the factors that made them so great?

From our data, it’s clear that many factors go into creating a winner, but if you’re able to establish a strong emotional connection, maintain a clear brand association and tell a compelling story in the time you’ve allotted, you should be well on your way to creating an ad that people remember this holiday season and sets your brand up for success.