The ads that sleighed Christmas in the UK this year (and why people loved them)

Ryan Barry:

Hi everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan, and I am joined by two lovely guests today, because we have a festive season ending episode. I'm joined by my cohost Patricia Montesdeoca, my colleague, and today's guest, Kim Malcolm. Hello ladies.

Kim Malcolm:

Hello.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hello Ryan.

Ryan:

How's it going?

Patricia:

Nice tree. I like it.

Ryan:

Yeah, my tree is green and yours is white, and Kim has a lot of cows on her couch, and she is wearing a Christmas sweater for those of you rocking with us on YouTube. It's a beautiful thing. This is the grand finale of season five, and it's been a hell of a season. We actually pivoted and Kim, last minute, we put her on the spot.

Patricia:

I'm very excited to have you, Kim. Kim, I know you're very excited to be here.

Kim:

Always. I get to talk about Christmas. I'm always excited to talk about Christmas and advertising, especially combining them.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's going to be fun. Today's episode, we are going to unpack a brilliant piece of work that Kim did using the Zappi platform to analyze all of the Christmas ads. For those of you who are listening in the United States, the Christmas ads to UK are essentially what the Superbowl ads are to us here in the us. It's a big tent pole moment where advertisers get to really show out and show up with their best work. And I think it's a really relevant time to talk about these ads given the state of the world we're in, given the state of the environment and some of the brands that we're going to talk about today did just such a wonderful job with the tack they employed and the emotion they invoked in their advertising. 

So we're going to speak about that in some detail today. We will also be sharing when we launch this episode, a link where you can actually analyze Kim's work directly. She is really good.

But before we do that, let's do a little background. So Kim Malcolm, industry legend, actually somebody who I've known for a long time and have had the chance to work with for the last... How long have we worked together, Kim?

Kim:

15 months. Can't believe it's been that long.

Ryan:

15 months. Before Kim joined us 15 months ago, which feels quick and long at the same time. If you know Kim, chances are you might have gotten asked to stay up too late to chat to her on a couch, maybe in Bulgaria, I don't know. But before Kim joined Zappi, she was a product leader at Kantar for many, many years. Kim, tell us a little bit about your background and also what led you to Zappi and some of the big things you've learned moving from a very big business to a small growing software business.

Kim:

Yeah, that's super interesting. I mean, I ended up like most people in research by accident. I did my degree in French, German and Spanish. I loved culture, I loved people from different markets. I loved learning. I was always curious. And back in the old days, I'm showing my age now, the fact that I spoke French, German and Spanish made me pretty valuable in research because we had field forces all around the world and we could translate stuff, we could make it work. 

So I fell into research. I then had a load of different roles, but across all of those roles, the passion that I seemed to land with was in advertising. It was really understanding consumer response and it was really understanding the effort of a load of people, the combination of art and science to create advertising. So I absolutely love that.

I spent years working with some of the biggest advertisers, looking at their ads, advising them on how to make them better or to be more specific and not creative. So not how to make them better, but where they'd need to focus on what could make them better, how they can bring their creativity to solve a problem that we'd identified in the data. I love doing that. And evolving the portfolio to better meet customer needs. So all of that was fantastic. And no matter how many different roles I took, I was always dragged back to advertising. 

Ryan:

I call that you're not creative by the way, for everybody who is listening. I actually work with Kim on a day to day basis and she's very, very creative. But anyways, I'm not going to let you get off with that subtle thing here. So you joined us 15 months ago, your first ever marketing job, if I remember correctly. You're now running a bunch of marketing for us. Talk to us about that before we get into Christmas advertisements.

Kim:

Well, that is interesting. So yeah, I hadn't done a marketing role per se before, but I guess when you were in a big organization, it's weird to think that you kind of touched on lots of different things. If you were into advertising, you were helping the product development, you are helping enable sales, you are helping with the marketing content. So I was doing all sorts of that stuff in my area of passion. I think what's been really nice since I've come to Zappi is realizing how much I enjoy the marketing side of it, how much I enjoy the freedom that I can have here where marketing can have a bigger impact in my area than what it could when I was working within more of a box or more rules or all of those kind of things. And also I can do marketing here with more data, which I totally love.

On this Christmas thing, I can research them all. If I want to know something about the recession, if I want to know about sustainability, I can get some data that's valuable to our customers, to our prospects and I can do something with it. So that's really helped me from the marketing side. It's been really great.

Ryan:

I love it. What do you think big companies need to learn from smaller companies that can help them move faster? Think about the customers you've been helping advise advertising on for all these years.

Kim:

Customers, staying close to them, trying to overcome all of the barriers that exist within a big business by being a hundred percent consumer centric. There's always challenges to making change. 

The bigger you are, the harder it is to turn the ship, but the more that you can get everyone to focus on the customer, the more that you can really interrogate what the customer's motivations are, what's impacting them, what their needs are, I think the easier you can persuade people across different functions that everyone needs to lean in a slightly different direction, that would make it faster. I don't know how practical that suggestion in terms of I know there's a million reasons why big businesses don't move fast, but that's got to be a nudge in the right direction is the alignment by really focusing on what the customer needs. Right?

Ryan:

Absolutely. Oh, go ahead, Patricia. Sorry.

Patricia:

I mean I was listening to you speak before and just now. Isn't it amazing that you're coming to a company that's much smaller than the companies you've worked with before, yet you were very clear that now you have much more information? That concept blows my mind because I've worked, as you know, in large companies and then small companies. And it's a different type of data. It's access to all of the data. And when you're a true data geek, that's what makes you... And knowing you less than Ryan does, I am going to agree with his call on bullshit because anybody who gets excited about data and is able to take pages and pages of numbers and responses and turn them into a story, sorry, you got to be creative to do that. So Kim, two BSs against you. Two against one.

Kim:

I think what I'll say is if there's one thing I've learned here, it's that creativity comes in different shapes and sizes. I'm quite good at problem solving, creatively, taking loads of data, working out what to do with it less than my traditional sense of creativity. It's a different definition, but you are right. Everyone's creative in different ways for sure.

Patricia:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

That's right. That's right. When you were talking about the traditional definition, I couldn't help but think of my little daughter, she's six and she just creates things, paintings, drawings, bracelets. And I'm like, I could never do that. But creativity comes in many forms.

Kim:

That's only because we've lost it. Listen, when we get to talk at the Christmas ads, we'll come and look at one of the ones that did really well, which was Lego, which absolutely was all about creativity and kids and their brilliance. Everyone's born with creativity and it kind of goes out of you when you start judging your own creativity instead of embracing it to see what you can do.

Ryan:

Absolutely.

Patricia:

You know what one of my pet peeves is, Kim? Before I let you go Ryan, and I'll take advantage of the space for the soapbox. You know how when you're little they teach you to color inside the line like mandalas and stuff like that. That's part of it. But I think that sometimes we should be allowed to draw without lines and go outside the line so that part of the creativity isn't lost. Sorry, that was a little soapbox. I'll get off now.

Ryan:

No, no, it's a good point. I think it relates back to Kim's advice. If the customer's at the center, then you follow the market differently than the linear lines of... We talked about this with Clay Parker Jones a few episodes ago. Businesses that have linearity based on their supply chain or their go to market motion or their retail or sales partners. There's a degree of coloring inside the lines that is how they inherently make money. Anything that is outside of those lines, even if that's in the best interest of the customer, may not work. 

So it's an interesting thing. And then the last conversation we had with Jorge was really about how do you make a business be customer centric? And it's freaking hard. You have to be able to catch the CFO, the CEO, the CMO, the COO in stride and all of those organizations with customer data, which is equally as important as OpEx and margin and EBITDA and all these other business financial metrics.

I think that's what motivates me so much about where consumer insights can go with technology to enable the voice of the consumer to exist at everybody's desktop. Not just all of you people on the phone who are insights managers. I keep telling you all this, let go of your Legos, and then your businesses will change. So Kim, let's talk about Christmas. We're going to talk about Christmas ads. I'm very excited about this. My wife thought I was weird last night when I was laying in bed watching a bunch of ads, which is what I was doing. Before we go into specifics, take us through what you did, the methodology, the approach, how many ads you evaluated, and then we'll get into some of the specifics.

Patricia:

Kim, please start telling us why you did it. I want people to hear where you got the idea and how you made it come to life. Because sometimes people don't understand where to get ideas. They're really good when you give them an idea, but how did you come up with this idea also?

Kim:

At this time of year, and I think Ryan said it right at the beginning to help explain to the US audience why we're getting so excited over a bunch of Christmas ads, but in the UK, Christmas is obviously massive and advertising's become a really huge part of it. I mean I'm sure it always was. Share of wallet at that time of year must be much bigger than all of the other times of year. So it's a time where you win or you lose.

The Aldi story, they just won an effectiveness award. They do great advertising. We'll come on to talk about it. But their key analysis was that they were starting to gain share and do quite well at different parts of the year. But at Christmas what was happening was people want to treat the family to things that were special and they weren't getting their fair share of wallet because people were moving from Aldi that was seen as being less luxury and less something that you had pride in serving to people over to other brands. If you lose your share of market at that time of year, you're losing a lot, right? Because that's when people spend.

So first of all, it's critical to win. So advertising is really, really critical. But I think we'd have to give credit to John Lewis for starting the whole trend out. Would you believe, 17 years ago they put their first Christmas ad out there? Highly emotive, just incredible work over the years. Some years better, some years worse. Incredible work. But they started the tradition of really doing great advertising that you either won or you lost with. When we were thinking about why we should provide data at this time of year, it's because it's a time of year where it really matters to be creative and effective and hit the mood of the nation to succeed as a business. And it's a time we can learn loads from.

So let's not pretend I'm not in marketing now. Of course I wanted to do this to provide data at a time of year when people were interested in it. I wanted to tap into the mood of my customers who wanted to understand it. But more than that, this data should be a really brilliant data set in learning a lot about how to create effective advertising and giving the rest of the creators, people who work in agencies, people who work in marketing, people who work in insights, things that they can use over the rest of the year to think about what great looks like, the different ways that different brands do it at the time of year when you know that all of those brands have put their best put forward. Because they absolutely do and they have to.

Ryan:

Yeah. And I think your reason makes sense particularly given the times we're in where the codification of a good Christmas ad and potentially what is a tense time in people's households will cascade when it's not a holiday. And I'll let you talk about the attributes that drove performance, but the things that resonate with consumers when perhaps the bank account is a little tighter, even though it's a festive period. They'll work in April too. They'll work in May and June and everything else. I like your why and it helps to also show people we're able to test everything quickly.

Kim:

Well, there's something about the mood as well. You said it's a difficult time of year. The mood that people are in this year, there's recession, there's inflation and UK's one of the country suffering most. Things are really bad. So it was really important that brands did well. I think the really nice thing this year, to answer your question, we researched 40 of the first ads that came out. Do you know what's incredible? They were bloody brilliant this year. We'd looked at them last year and it was the end of Covid and there was a few good ones. There's always a few good ones. But this year, ad after ad, literally they were releasing them one day and we'd research the next day, five came out and waiting for one to bomb. They absolutely didn't. They did really well. They were all brilliant.

The other thing that I could do using the Zappi platformwas I could go in there and build an average. So you've got your country average, I can see what a normal ad looks like a normal time of the year, then I can go into the platform and I can create a Christmas average and I can immediately see the Christmas average is way higher than the normal average, which is brilliant because it means all those advertisers have put their best foot forward at the time of year that it matters most. And that's really, really great to see. Obviously for them it's also really lovely to see that they're way better than last year. 

There's been a lot of learning, they've managed to get it right. I think there was a load of lessons learned from advertising during Covid as well that people have probably applied. It's like bad news after bad news, after bad news. So do you want to remind people that they feel shit or do you want to give them hope for the future and make them feel good? I think that's what they've done well this year.

Ryan:

Yeah, I remember the token Covid ads that would be like... You could put any freaking company's logo on the same ad and it was, "In times like these," the same dry, "In times like these, we need to be together." So I'm glad that brands woke up to it. So that's pretty cool and I'm pleased to hear that they stepped their game up. Take me through some of the thematics. 

Why were the ads better component wise? I know all three of us are excited to talk about some specific ads, but what are some of the themes of why they're good and what drove the performance and some of the metrics that the attributes associated with?

Kim:

So I did have a think about this. I mean you'll have seen some of the content that I've written, but I guess when you look across them, there are probably five key themes. 

The first one I've already touched on. Understand the mood. Don't be tone deaf to what's going on, but don't mirror it. Like I said, people feel shit enough already. They don't need you to tell them that they feel shit. So don't mirror the mood, understand it, don't be tone deaf to it, but make people feel good. The role of advertising as well is to entertain. It is a bit of escapism. So give people hope, allow them to feel good, allow them to feel the joy. As I go through these five points, I can probably pepper them with examples if that would bring it to life a bit.

Ryan:

Yeah, that'd be cool.

Kim:

But I guess it's maybe to contrast the examples here. So Tesco was in our top 10 ads, really big supermarket in the UK. And their ad was all about joy. Stand for joy. And it was a political campaign around really what are the rules of Christmas and bringing joy forward. And it just struck a chord beautifully. They talked about the fact that they could help facilitate that joy. They talked about the deals that they put on that meant that people could feel proud, welcome people into their house, celebrate with people, feel that connection that's so important at Christmas and still achieve that in an affordable way. So it gave hope, it gave joy, it allowed them to focus on the things they could do rather than the things that they couldn't do. And it worked really, really well. I think that's a really great example. There was one, and I hate to talk about the bad example, no one wants to talk about it.

Ryan:

No, we need to learn from failure too. So let's pick some scabs.

Kim:

And listen. Hey, failure's going far too far. The sad thing is the devil's in the detail in the execution. There was this really nice ad from a company called Very, and it was really nice. There was a really strong insight behind it. It talked about all the different days of Christmas. When you are at the Christmas party from work and how you're behaving. When you're with the family, when you're with your kids, the Christmas day, the bloody noise on Boxing Day when they're playing with all the crappy gifts that someone bought who doesn't have kids and shouldn't have had that noise in the house. There's all of those different days.

Ryan:

Don't buy slime for my kids, grandparents, if you're listening to this.

Kim:

Don't do it.

Ryan:

Stop with the goddamn slime.

Kim:

Oh my god, I'll never forget…

Patricia:

Nothing with glitter, please.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's bullshit. Let's codify that next Christmas. What do consumers not want their grandparents to buy their children. Glitter and slime.

Patricia:

Oh god, glitter and slime. Please.

Kim:

So the insight was there, the execution was there, but the small bit of where they ended the ad was all about how you pay for this. And people are hypersensitized. People are scared of getting in debt. People are scared of the whole nation getting in debt. People are scared of the consequences in January. And even just talking about the fact that you could buy now or you could buy now, pay later, or you could spread it over three months. I was really shocked when I looked into the platform and looked into the responses. That's a small part of a big ad and yet, when you looked at, there was a bit that really turned people off. They got really upset about it. You reminded them of the financial problems and in some ways you were seen as a bit irresponsible in how you were asking people to respond.

What could have been a really great execution unfortunately had that little twist or turn that didn't quite work for people and that small number of seconds took up way more of their mental space and memories of the ad than that small piece should have done. So I think that's a nice example too.

Patricia:

I saw some ads that also focused on the similar things. I think it's not TJ Maxx in the UK it's TK Maxx.

Kim:

Yes.

Patricia:

TK Maxx. And then there was another one in the US on Walmart that also talked about the same thing about that it's okay to look for the deal. That's not the point. The point is not that. The point is sharing and caring. The point is all about being with your family. The point is the positive aspects, whatever holiday you celebrate. No matter what holiday it is, whatever religion, people practice, the core element is about sharing and caring with friends and family. So it focused on spending less to have the same joy, which I really liked. I really liked. Because in the past, I've seen too much about spend, spend, spend, gift, gift, gift if that was the most important thing where it's not anymore. People are much more conscious about it.

Kim:

That's where Christmas comes into it. Christmas really is about nostalgia and connecting, being with friends. That was actually a really nice segue because the second point was all about that. Tap into what Christmas means to people. What's really lovely Ryan, you mentioned the topic, it's difficult times but the one thing that people can't take away from you even in difficult times is that love and connection and joy that a human gives to another human, especially humans who are close and love each other very much. I think that's a really, really important one. There was a couple of really nice examples of that human connection as well that came through well. So Disney followed-

Patricia:

What a beautiful ad.

Kim:

Yeah. And your kids as well, that would resonate with you especially. But that ad, I mean we could talk about what happened in it or we could talk about how you feel. But fundamentally my interpretation of it was just here is a really loving, caring family where everyone supports everyone else, where everyone wants to bring joy to everyone else and there's some change happening and change is difficult and the youngest child in the house is getting on edge and getting nervous because there's a new younger sibling about to arrive. But what was beautiful in it was that human connection throughout the support of the parents, the support of the sibling to be able to give that love and patience so that they could accept the younger sibling.

And then that beautiful resolving moment when the youngest sibling that's no longer the youngest anymore takes all that love that was given to them and is able to give that to the new baby and the family and is able to take on that role and that connectedness. I don't know, it's a beautiful story of connection. And really in our data, the journey was there. It was a perfect example of getting you really involved with the characters, the story, the sympathy that people were feeling for that young girl who was about to welcome a younger sibling into the house and the sheer joy and happiness and love that resolved itself at the end of that story arc, it was a lovely one. Really nice.

Patricia:

And having three kids, both Ryan and I, we understand. There are two things that really marked me with that campaign. One is more emotional and the other one's more rational. Let's do the rational one first. The fact that they were able to take... 

Because I went back and I looked at the rest of the campaign to see what they did with it. And we haven't tested that yet, but they have employed the story so well. Little snippets throughout the rest of their campaign in such a beautiful way. You know how sometimes it's a really good commercial, you want to know what happens next and what happened to the family and how did the kid grow up? So it does that.

On the emotional side, I don't know if you have kids or not Kim, but Ryan, I love the fact that the parents messed up a little bit and so they hurt the girl. And so the fact that this caused a conversation in the house, it felt so real to me. I felt so seen, so connected that they know that unintentionally parents do the wrong thing but we can resolve it. So I loved it. It just touched me.

Kim:

I thought it was beautiful. And I have, by the way, I've got two boys so I haven't quite managed to roll for three like the pair of you, but-

Ryan:

Don't do it.

Kim:

I've got my hands full with two.

Ryan:

I just hope my third kid never listens to this podcast because then he'll think I didn't want him. He was a bit of an accident. But we do love Cal Barry. He's a great addition to the family.

Kim:

Yeah, an accident that was always meant to be. That's how they are.

Patricia:

Exactly.

Ryan:

There's an interesting thing about all the ads to me. So the ad that went wrong reminded us, without meaning to, of how shit the times are. 

Good advertising, people can see it, they can feel it and then obviously everybody who advertises they want to do something about it. So that's what good advertising does. It evokes emotion. All these ads, and by the way, some of them were cartoons, some of them were animated, some of them were real life. But what I thought that they did really well, we're talking about the top 10, Kim, they replicated real moments. And some of them for me, I only know they were real because I'd go to England a lot. Some of them were very culturally relevant, just the little bits on the overground rail and some of the ads and everything.

But they reminded you of the good times of togetherness. It was almost like a 30 seconds of escape from, "I got a big credit card bill," or, "Oh my gosh, the grocery bill is $300." I think for businesses that's an interesting way to connect with humans even in a tense time is to remind them of the good. I say this to my wife all the time. We were as happy when we were broke living paycheck to paycheck in a small apartment in Watertown because of that dynamic. I think those ads all did that to me. It was a really interesting theme as I watched through them even though the delivery, the execution was so different.

Kim:

I think that's really right. One of the other points I was going to make the role of advertising really is to make you feel good, partly because it's escapism and partly because if the ad does nothing else, if it makes you feel good and it triggers the brand at the same time as you are feeling good, then that positivity rubs off on the brand and it makes you more likely to choose it into the future. It's all about functional messaging. Emotion is the very most critical thing because emotion gains attention. You pay attention to things that make you feel something. And emotion rubs off on the brand so long as you've given the brand a role and therefore it does both jobs. So make you feel something.

I like your observation. My interesting categorization was two types of making you feel something. They're making you feel something deep, deep down, making me go on a journey, making me cry, making me really feel something. We talked about Disney doing that. I think there's two others that did that beautifully this year. One was Amazon. Did you watch the Amazon one?

Ryan:

Great ad.

Patricia:

Yes, yes.

Kim:

Great ad. So I guess for anyone who hasn't watched it, there's this girl, she's obsessed with her snow globe. They take great care, look after it everywhere they go, won't let go of it. And the connection between the dad and the daughter, he just wants to make her really happy and he does what dads do, make it bigger and better. So he goes off to make a snow globe the size of his shed. And obviously he uses Amazon to order a paper shredder, which is the role of Amazon to make that moment. But it's wonderful. You feel that deep, deep down when you realize what he's doing for the love of his daughter. When you see her face and the magic light up in her face when she's in the greenhouse shed, it's incredible. So that's a feeling deep, deep down.

John Lewis did that brilliantly every year. And they did it again this year. So if you watch the John Lewis ad, there's a guy who's learning to skateboard and he keeps falling off and he keeps struggling and he's hurt his leg and you wonder what he's doing. And then at the end you see a girl, Emily, I think her name was. 

She arrives at the door and she's going to be their foster child and she's a skater and he has just spent the last month, two months, who knows how long it's gone on for, trying to learn how to ride a skateboard. Why? So that he can help this foster child who needs to feel welcomed and who needs to feel like they have some connection, something in common. And he's gone all out of his way just for her. That emotional journey, I mean people were literally describing word for word exactly what happened in great detail. They were articulating that they'd been on an emotional rollercoaster, that they'd been crying, but it resolved itself with happiness.

We have a little moment by moment reaction and at the moment when there's the reveal and she comes to the door and it's obvious why he's been learning to skateboard. It jumps up strong likes by like 15%. I can really feel that deep, deep down. There's that connection. There's that moment of surprise. And do you know what? Even when that moment of surprise is gone, you watch it for the second time, it's a story that keeps on giving. Because instead of being surprised, you watch the reaction in the girl's face and you feel it all over again even though you knew it was going to happen. The devil in the detail. Sorry, I've gone on for a long time on that, but that's the feeling deep, deep down.

The other half of the ads, you still feel something, but it's much more lighthearted feeling. Humor's a really big part of the ad that were there. Did you see the one for Barbour with Paddington Bear that plays his character? There's funny moments. There's him trying to stick a doorknob back on with some marmalade, some very Paddington moments. Even though again that has a very emotional storyline of course, where he's trying to make someone in his community feel like they have a connection and be a part of Christmas.

And then there's the Aldi one, right? Absolutely hilarious. So it's a playoff Home Alone. It's Kevin Carrot. He's a Carrot, but he's a regular person representing the normal person trying to make everything great for Christmas and all the trials and tribulations and the humor in there. I think I just peed myself at one bit. Then what was the bit where you probably saw it where Kevin Carrot flies in and it says that he's turned himself into the nose, but I think we all know that he's not flown to be a nose at all and he's somewhere else on the snowman. It's really, really funny. 

All of those little moments are highly entertaining and they make you laugh. What these have in common is characters. Characters that you can get involved with. Characters that you feel like you are a part of carrying the outcome for what happens. They have storylines that take you on a journey, but they do it in a really different way. Light hearted humor or just deep, deep down, I've got all the feels here. And I think that's interesting as well.

Ryan:

Absolutely. Oh go ahead, Patricia. Go ahead.

Patricia:

No, no. One of the things I really liked is that each of the ads that really succeeded did so in their own unique manner. I mean Aldi was focusing on food and that's what made it real. That's one of the things that makes it okay, makes it even better. 

As you said, the devil's in the detail. This is not such a small detail, this is a big one because if a bank had done the carrot, it may not have been as successful because it's all about food. I like it when the manufacturers realize that they have to be true to themselves as well as the season, as well as the consumers, as well as everything, right? 

Because I mean the feels are sometimes good feels or sometimes anxious feels. We have the research that shows that one of the things that parents are most anxious about is saying no to their kids. Especially at Christmas. They want to give them everything. That's why the dad wanted to do it bigger and better. So the ads that tap into that are really special.

McDonald's did it well too. I don't know if you guys saw that ad, the McDonald's ad? Did you see that one, Ryan?

Ryan:

No, which one was it?

Patricia:

McDonald's, right? The family, mom, dad, son and he realizes that there's a thing called the list so that you can make a list so that Santa knows what you want. So he starts creating the list and the mom and kid started getting anxiety, right? Because the list went on and then on and on and I'm thinking, oh my God, I mean what are the parents going to do and how are they going to resolve this? The list was just one of those things that just wrapped and wrapped and wrapped around. And then he asks, "How are we going to get this to Santa?" And then the wind comes and blows away the list. And part of me thought, are they going to say that now it went to Santa?

So the mom you could see sometimes she's smiling and sometimes she's thinking, "Oh my god, this list." And then he's only left in his hand, spoil alert, with a piece of paper that shows the family, which was his first wish on the list and they happen to lose the list in front of McDonald's. So the three of them go to McDonald's. But it's all about anxiety and resolution in a positive way. So McDonald's is something that's affordable, you can still have a good time. So I thought that's one they did well when they joined all three.

Kim:

Do you know what you've just reminded me of? This goes back a few years, but you know how I said John Lewis had done it brilliantly for all these years? They had an ad and because I'm getting old and they've been going for 17 years, I'm going to tell you it's five years ago, it was probably 15 or something. But they had one of their ads where it was all about the anticipation of Christmas. It was all about this kid feeling the anticipation. They were counting down the days and you were thinking, oh here's this kid, you can't wait to get all of his presents. The twist. This kid had been counting down the days to Christmas because they were desperate to give the present that they'd chosen to their parents.

Ryan:

That's so sweet.

Kim:

It was so lovely. And it just reminded me when you said the big long list, but the idea that they're desperate to give as well. It was really, really nice.

Ryan:

Patricia, you say something really important. I think it's worth unpacking a bit. The brands need to know where they can authentically enter into a conversation. And that takes a brand manager and an insights team understanding their brand DNA and being consistent with not just things like assets, which is all the buzzwords today are more distinctive brand assets but authentically what is your voice and can you have a conversation in a brand? Can you as a brand enter into that conversation? And I mean a lot of bad PR happens from brands entering into conversations they have no business being in. And I think it's a function of, as we talked about earlier in the season with Mark Ritson, turning the lens around and saying what is this whole market? How am I perceived in everybody's life and how can I enter in?

I thought one of the Christmas ads that did that really well was Morrison's and they authentically brought the farmer into the advertisement, which clearly was aligned with their brand persona. And I probably wouldn't have played the same way if Marks & Spencer tried to do it. But I think it's a really important lesson for brands to not try to be somewhere that they don't belong without earning it. Because consumers today more than ever call bullshit.

Kim:

I think it's belonging and executing in a way that's authentic for your brand as well. I think that's what they did really well this year. You just mentioned the Morrisons ads with Farmer Christmas. It was authentic for them because they're supermarket is about supporting British farming and local providence and all of those things. But it's not just that authenticity, it's how they then delivered it. The character of Farmer Christmas is very in keeping with the kind of values and personality of a Morrisons brand.

You may not have seen it, but Waitrose is a really high end supermarket also in the UK. And they did their ad and it was around providence as well as food. And it was all around again Farmer Christmas. It was all about the effort that you go through to create the perfect food that then gets sold. But the way that they did it was totally different. They don't have all of the lights and the jazz and the festive farmer jugging along on his tractor. They did it the Waitrose way. And this is the point, there's ways of creating great advertising, but authenticity is at the heart of it. And knowing your brand, its personality, its values and doing it in the right way.

And M&S is another great example of that. People absolutely love M&S food at the best of times, but M&S Christmas food, wow. And they know that, right? They had this beautiful story and at some point in that story, which was very humorous and everything else, they showed a beautiful spread of food on this table. 

Do you know what? And this will surprise you. That was the piece of the ad that drove the highest likes, the highest love. People absolutely loved thinking about how they were going to enjoy that beautiful spread and the anticipation that came from that with M&S. So understanding that that's part of your brand and part of its brand values and showing it in that way is hugely powerful.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's an interesting point. Okay, I want to ask you a hard business question now. All of these ads made us feel something. They all did it and delivered it authentically and they focused on togetherness. And oftentimes businesses conflate sales and marketing. Marketing is not sales, everybody. So let me not kid myself. 

However, the point of advertising is oftentimes conflicted because you're trying to build your brand and drive sales. So I wanted to ask you a question because I want to contrast the supermarket ads. There was no promotion, product shot or even call to action in all the ads. And I thought it was the best ad personally, partly because I watch Home Alone around this time of year and I thought it was brilliant. Their competitors all had a CTA, whether it was a promotion, a thing that they were trying to sell, some reason to get you in there.

Now let's be real. Both Aldi and the rest of the supermarkets want you to go through their door this holiday season. Let's not kid ourselves. They all executed a motion well. Talk to me about the purchase intent differences from some of the ads. In this time of year, Kim, did you notice Aldi has a higher or lower purchase intent than somebody who happened to have a CTA? And just unpack that a little bit for me because let's be honest, they all did well for their brands this holiday season, but what do you project in terms of short term sales as a result of it?

Kim:

Honestly, particularly the type of ads that these were, and a lot of them have been featured in big programs on TV, they're not meant to be driving that immediate response. And it's super interesting to me even that you point out that they had a CTA. I would say that if they did, and I'm sure they did because you watched them in detail, that's not what people talked about. It's not what they noticed and it wasn't a part of the ad. Just because you show something, it doesn't mean it's part of the memories.

Ryan:

I'll be honest with you, I thought it was tacky. One of them showed it was this really emotive ad and they showed a pie or something and I'm like, "Get that fucking pie for four pounds out of here." It was literally my reaction as I was watching it. Sorry, go on.

Kim:

But reminding people of the food that's available for their Christmas in the way that M&S did when they had that beautiful spread of food, they did that also in the Aldi one. They had the table with Kevin Carrot at the end. They all came together.

Ryan:

Good point.

Kim:

There was a role for reminding you of the beautiful wares that were there or the providence of what they were selling or whatever. Listen, the most important thing for this time of year and actually throughout the whole year is that you create something engaging that actually gets people's attention, that makes them feel something. And that you trigger the brand very clearly as having a role in that. And if you do those two things, you'll get the sales. We don't need to always believe that... I think there's a load of data out there. If you create brand building advertising, it can also create short term effects. 

If you create short term activation only advertising, there's a strong chance it won't build your brand for the longer term. Some of these ads are supported, right? Amazon's a really great example. I don't know if you saw. It wasn't really in our data. They had a Black Friday ad. Did you see it? Possibly not.

Ryan:

I hate Black Friday so much that I just turned it all off in my brain.

Kim:

This one was quite cool. They've got their brand building ad running and then they've got a Yeti dancing in the snow.

Ryan:

I did see it. It was a good ad.

Kim:

What's really good is it was clearly an activation ad. It was talking about the percentage discounts that they've got, but they did it in quite an engaging way. What was super interesting with that one is recognizing that it's more of an activation ad. I decided to check it into our solution to look at how it worked on Facebook. 

I mean the kind of promo ads that you would see on Facebook when you were scrolling through or on Insta or wherever you spend your time. And it did really brilliantly there because people are so used to such dreadful, "Buy me now, buy me now, buy me now," that actually in that context it was hugely engaging and the most emotive ad that you could get there that made you feel something as you watched him dance. And the movement of the Yeti and the snow, even if you didn't turn the audio on, which of course most people don't as they scroll through on Facebook, it still has a really good effect.

A lot of these ads are complimented. If you take M&S, they've got loads of activation around it, they've got loads of things happening in store, they've got other creative units in other places. The TV ad is the big feature and cornerstone. It doesn't need to have a big CTA. It's obvious what you're meant to do with it. And people are happy just to be entertained, feel good about the brand, know what brand it is, and then you know what? You've got some mental availability. You're more likely to be the one chosen when you go shopping. That's what advertising does.

Patricia:

You said something that triggered a memory and something I thought that I wanted to ask you about. Depending on the medium, right? Sometimes there's audio and sometimes there's not. One of the things I noticed is that almost all of the ads, you could watch it and the acting, the directing and the whole entire mini movie was so well done that you could tell what was happening from their faces. If there's music, if there's chatting, it would add to it. But I noticed that a lot and that's something that makes them be able to play it on different mediums. Did you see that trend across everything?

Kim:

No, not across everything. Well first of all, some of the stories were very long and they created shorter versions and what for me was really powerful, often the one minute version, so still not 20 seconds that you might want for social media, whatever, but some of the one minute versions were way better than the two and a half minute ones. 

Because what they'd managed to do was tell the entire story in a captivating way without all of the bits that most people didn't need to see. And actually we'd probably get a really good bang for buck, right? The ad needs to be the right length obviously for the story that you need to tell. Some of them needed audio, some of them don't. For me, like some of the ones who talked about Disney, Amazon, John Lewis, yeah, there was no words. The music though helped take you on the journey. I think they would've been lacking without their music.

Ryan:

Yeah, I think so.

Kim:

Music really does play a good role.

Ryan:

Ladies, I got time for one more question with you two. Your favorite ad of the Christmas set that Kim tested. Patricia, you go first and tell me why quickly.

Patricia:

The Lego one. My soon to be son-in-law, shout out to Fernando, works at Lego. And the whole entire thing just made me happy watching the kids play, listening to Katie Perry sing, watching Creativity. I'm relearning to do Lego myself. The whole thing just touched me, although a very close second was Coke because I just got a soft spot in my heart for the trucks and the lights and the music. Fernando wins, so Lego wins, but Coke is a really, really close second.

Ryan:

That's a good one. And Coke's such a good reminder of staying consistent with what works. There's all this data that's come out recently. This message burnout thing is kind of bullshit. Those trucks, that Santa Claus or Budweiser, those Clydesdales, you see them and you go, "I'm about to open some happiness. I want a beer." It's tried and true. All right, good one. Kim, how about you?

Kim:

Can I just say before that in times of recession, look back in your basement and check that you haven't got some gold sat there, which is all of your ads that you took off air after eight weeks that were still bloody brilliant and better than anything that you could create today. So make the most of that. 

I was also going to look at choosing Lego for a different reason. I'm going to tell you that and then I'm going to be naughty and choose my favorite ad. But the Lego one. Do you not think it's the most creative and effective project demo you could ever have? I mean effectively it's a bloody project demo, right? But it's a brilliant one. It just shows exactly how their project works to bring to life the imaginations, the teamwork, the creativity of the kids, and then the magic, which is so important at Christmas. When they see their creation being a real thing they can ride on, it's absolutely brilliant. But I'm just going to talk about M&S.

Ryan:

One more thing. What an excellent use of celebrity dollars. So often brands are spending way too much goddamn money to put a token celebrity in. She was brilliant in that ad and it was integrated into the magic of the whole thing. I thought they did an excellent job.

Kim:

It was. Yeah.

Ryan:

Now since you cheated, what was your actual favorite ad?

Kim:

Well, I'm just going to choose the one I'd give credit to. I'm going to give credit this year to M&S, right? Because what's something super important to me? Fresh consistency. What Aldi have done really well is taking the same consistent Kevin the Carrot, but make him highly versatile so that he can perform in all these different scenarios. John Lewis had done a brilliant job, but they change every year and it's a bit up and down. I'm going to give credit to M&S because they brought back the fairy played by Dawn French, who everyone loves, or should I say probably who the people who are shopping in M&S, probably brings back really great memories for them. 

They first of all introduced Dawn French as the fairy with their little magic dust alongside Percy Pig last year. This year they've used her again, but they let her bring to life her comedy partner who was basically a dog's toy who came to life and escaped the dog and there was loads of magic.

So they've tapped into the magic of Christmas using the same asset again. They've got loads of potential. If last year's ad was good and this year's ad's even a little bit better, let's give them credit for where they could go next year as they carry on this idea of magic with Dawn French with the fairy where it's just immediately M&S and has the ability to demonstrate their amazing food. I just think it was a really good combo.

Patricia:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

These are good reasons. Okay, I'm torn between which one's my favorite. Lego, Aldi and Disney were my top three. All of them made me feel something. I'm going to choose Disney, but I do want to give Aldi a shout out because if I wasn't a father of three kids and a husband, it would be Aldi. Because Aldi spoke to me as a kid who grew up watching all those Home Alone movies. So I guarantee you, Aldi, if you're listening, I'll be in London the third week of January and I will be shopping at Aldi over the other supermarkets as a result. And it's going to happen subconsciously. I'm just going to find an Aldi and walk in and get my coconut water or whatever else I get when I go to London.

My favorite ad was Disney because it reminded me once again of how special the brand is in my family. And it was funny, I watched the ad and my son's actually ill at the moment and I was putting on Disney+ today and I remember the freaking ad, I was putting it on for him. These were wonderful ads. It's a testament to good creative. And I have to tell everybody, you shouldn't only do good creative around Christmas. These principles that Kim and Patricia have codified for you, they work all year, folks. It's just good advertising that speaks to consumers.

Kim, I appreciate you doing this. I can't wait until you do next year. Hopefully we can do it for the Super Bowl too, because that would be fun.

Patricia:

Did we do it for FIFA?

Ryan:

FIFA, no. I didn't do FIFA. We didn't have time. It's a can of worms I don't want to open today because of... Well, it's a polarizing topic, the World Cup. So I will just leave it there and I don't have any consumer data, but it's a sticky one for brands to put behind. So I'll leave FIFA there. But maybe when they choose to go and behave differently, we'll do that again.

Kim:

Can I say Aldi cleverly did their little bit there. I don't know if you saw, they did their teaser, which was also incredible. Was it the Nike one where they were going through the airport? Like all of these-

Ryan:

Oh, I didn't see it.

Kim:

Football players kicking. Well Aldi did a takeoff of that old ad of all of the different players running through the airport. And they did that and it finished with them sat on a plane realizing that Kevin wasn't there and it was the Home Alone scene where it went, "Kevin!" And then a couple of days later they introduced their big ad, which is the one we've been talking about. But they very cleverly tapped into the fact that football doesn't collide with Christmas ever and it has this year. And they felt it couldn't be ignored. So they did something really clever with it without getting into any of the politics. They just had that as a little teaser. Just lovely. Anyway.

Ryan:

Smart way to get involved without having to step in shit. Right?

Kim:

Exactly that.

Ryan:

Oh gosh. I really enjoyed this conversation and we're going to do this again next year. To all of our listeners, thank you. We got our Spotify wrap link last night. It was pretty cool. We grew the podcast by a lot this year. The engagement is incredible. 

If you or somebody you know is doing something great to drive customer-centric growth, we want to talk to you. So please get at us. Kim, I'm so glad I finally got you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Kim:

Thanks for having me for that topic especially.

Ryan:

Yeah, this was fun. Really good work.

Patricia:

Excellent.

Ryan:

When we post this episode, we will make sure that you all have access to Kim's data so you can learn how you can make your brand as popular as these brands did over Christmas all year round. Happy holidays, everybody. I hope that you get to spend time with your loved ones.

Patricia:

Happy holidays.

Ryan:

And that you grip each other close. It's going to be a beautiful time to spend together. Patricia, thank you for a great season five. Kim, we'll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.

Patricia:

Bye guys. Thank you.

Kim:

Bye.