The best Christmas ads in Sweden in 2023

Article by Charlotte von Kries

introduction

While the south of Sweden is already blanketed in snow, the weather forecast is raising hopes for the rest of Sweden to experience a White Christmas. After we already analysed how this year’s Christmas ads are perceived in the UK, Germany and the US, we did not want to miss the country where DVJ opened yet another office at the beginning of the year. So after chatting with Swedish colleagues about their Christmas traditions and favourite ads, we compiled a set of 20 Swedish ads. Let’s have a look at how they perform!

The role of Christmas advertising

Each year the question remains the same: How are Christmas ads perceived in our markets? This year’s Christmas study was conducted in five countries: the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Sweden and the US. Following the DVJ way, we created an ad reel with only Christmas ads that compete for the consumer’s attention in each market. In this ‘unforced exposure’ methodology participants can skip the ads by zapping as they would when watching TV at home.

We then ask respondents what they recall seeing in terms of the brands and the ad’s message, and finally, we show each respondent two ads in full length and have them evaluate these ads. This year we included many ads from different countries, testing around 100 Christmas ads in total of which 20 ads just for Sweden!

PERFORMANCE MATRIX

We visually summarise the results of all tested Swedish ads by plotting them on the performance matrix that we use as part of our pretesting methodology (see Figure 1). The matrix shows how ads score on both breakthrough and brand building, relative to other Swedish TV commercials.

On the y-axis, we plot the breakthrough dimension based on our engagement, unaided brand and message recall metrics. Breakthrough is an important metric because advertisements must ‘break through the clutter’ for people to remember the brand and comprehend the message. An ad cannot be expected to have an actual impact on the brand if it is not sufficiently watched and remembered in the first place.

On the x-axis, we plot the values for the brand-building dimension which includes positive associations, excitement and brand appeal. Through these two dimensions, the performance matrix clearly shows how an ad compares to the benchmark and where the pain points are.

 Figure 1: Performance matrix – Swedish Christmas ads 2023

EXPLANATION GRID: Percentile rankings of all 6 individual KPIs are determined on a normalized scale (0-100) and summarized into a Breakthrough (Y) and Brand Building (X) score and then plotted accordingly on the grid.

What stands out right away is that only one ad lands in one of the green quadrants, i.e., ICA’s ad. Overall, only one-fourth of the tested ads scored on average level or higher. Strikingly, as many as four more ads could have been in the green quadrants based on their brand-building performance, but their breakthrough scores are falling behind.

SWEDEN’s Top 3 IN 2023

Just like last year, humour seems to be an important element of the winning Swedish ads. However, in 2023 this stylistic element also gets joined by an appreciation of relatability and compassion. But how did we get to our top three? We believe ads should score well on both dimensions and cannot compensate for a low score with a high score on the other dimension.

Since there is just one ad in the green quadrants, we lowered the lines of the green quadrants to check which ads score well enough on both dimensions to fall inside this new area (see the blue dashed lines for clarification in Figure 1). The top 3 Christmas ads for Sweden in 2023 are:

1. ICA
2. Willys
3. Lidl

ICA

The Swedish number one this year is ICA, the largest Swedish supermarket with a history of 100 years. Not only does the supermarket have a long history, but also the set up of their ads has quite some tradition. In 2007, this soap-like ad format even received a Guinness Book of Records entry as “the longest-running television advertising drama.” It features a set of supermarket employees in an ICA supermarket.

While these ads are used to present the special offers of the week, they are also very humorous and carry a storyline. The tested ad focuses on their store character Stig who is the owner of the ICA store. While mentioning this week’s offers, he talks about ICA’s collaboration with the Red Cross which aims to fight child poverty in Sweden.

The iconic format leads to the highest scores in aided and unaided brand recall as well as message and ad recall. Further, we see high scores for excitement and brand appeal. Looking at the most liked elements, we see next to the typical elements such as the “quality” and the “prices”, that this ad is liked because “Ica donates to those in need” and since “It is comical but at the same time has a message and provides information” which fittingly sums up the whole set up of the ICA ads.

Figure 2: ICA 2023

WILLYS

On the second place, we find yet another grocery store. Willys is one of the biggest discounters in Sweden and promised “Weekend food for everyday prices” in this year’s Christmas campaign. The commercial focuses on the heroes of every Christmas Eve: Those who get the groceries home which, under the Swedish weather conditions, can mean fighting yourself through plenty of snow and harsh winds. These Christmas heroes are accompanied by the sea shanty “Roll The Old Chariot Along” which is a shanty used for “tasks […] that required a bright walking pace” (Wikipedia).

While the main characters are fighting their way through snow, ice and wind, they join in singing “We’d be alright if the wind was in our sails.” While we see humour coming back in high scores on our funny metric, the Willys ad manages to land on the podium through high scores for breakthrough, specifically unaided brand recall and message recall.

Willys seems to win consumers by showing the relatable struggle of getting the Christmas groceries home as one consumer mentions when asked about the most appealing element of the ad: “I like that it is so genuine in some way. They show the hassles of Christmas but in the end the good Christmas food.”

Figure 3: Willys 2023

LIDL

With Lidl yet another retailer managed to land on the podium in Sweden. With the very same ad, Lidl had already been very successful in Germany and the UK. The ad features a raccoon as the main character in a rather unusual portrayal. While raccoons are often viewed as nuisance animals, this ad’s raccoon is portrayed as cute and helpful. The ad tells a heartwarming story and is centred around doing good for others and making children smile on Christmas Eve.

Through a watermark and many smaller and bigger brand cues, such as the supermarket itself or branded shopping bags, the Lidl logo is prominently displayed throughout the video. Also amongst Swedish consumers, this resulted in high scores on brand recall including the highest score for top-of-mind and unaided brand recall. Further, we again see top scores not only on enjoyment but also on distinctiveness as well as rich positive associations.

In the open ends one consumer shares: ”Surprising commercial, it had a depth that most commercials lack.” and “That it stands out a little from what you usually see from grocery stores.” which makes sense as in Sweden most supermarkets focus on presenting their weekly offers.

Not only the raccoon, the star of the ad but also the message of the ad was favoured by Swedish consumers: “It shows what Christmas is all about – to show empathy.” and “It was cute and felt like Christmas unites.”

Figure 4: LIDL SW 2023

conclusion

In summary, we can draw a few general conclusions:

• If you want to make a winning Christmas ad in Sweden, it should contain some humour.
• Compared to the Swedish TV benchmark, the majority of Christmas ads perform poorly.
• Especially on breakthrough, the Swedish Christmas ads are falling behind – something that we see more often for Christmas ads.
• Some ads performed very strongly in the brand-building dimension but still missed the podium because of poor breakthroughs. As stated earlier, an ad cannot be expected to have an actual impact on the brand if it is not sufficiently watched and remembered in the first place. This is where our pre-test methodology can help to identify room for growth pre-launch.

Finally, we’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2024 from everyone at DVJ!