The best Christmas ads in Germany in 2023

Article by Charlotte von Kries

introduction

While we saw marketing experts in the UK discussing British Christmas ads as early as the beginning of November, most German brands’ Christmas campaigns didn’t start until the Christmas fairs opened and Advent began. So we got ourselves some German Christmas cookies and searched the web to see what the German advertising landscape had to offer this Christmas.

Since our annual Christmas Study has been growing steadily over the last years to 5,000 interviews, we decided to pack the results into bite-sized articles for each country this year. We already started with the article about the UK and now it’s time to continue with the German Christmas ads.

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 people 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 Germany!

Split results: Where half the Cheer Was a Hit, and the Other? Not So Much

As we have been testing Christmas ads in Germany for four consecutive years, our benchmark encompasses data from 40 Christmas ads. This enables us to compare the performance throughout the years.

For this year’s German Christmas ads, we see pretty much a split picture: Nine spots manage to land in the green quadrants with one even reaching the top quadrant. That means that these spots are above the average of the previous year’s Christmas ads in Germany. The grey average area remains almost blank as the other ads perform below the average of the previous year’s ads and therefore, stay in the red area.

After this first teaser of the results, let’s have a look at how the ads compare to our regular TV benchmark. Of course, even though in December many Christmas commercials are running, Christmas ads still have to compete with regular TV commercials. Therefore, we visually summarise the results by plotting all tested ads 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 German TV commercials.

On the y-axis, we plot the breakthrough dimension, which is 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 – German 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.

Strikingly, two ads (EDEKA and LIDL) managed to land in the green area this year. The ad from EDEKA is even pretty close to the prestigious Top-quadrant. Overall, there are as many as five ads with high scores on the usually weak breakthrough dimension. On the contrary, we see a couple of ads in the opposite area of the grid, meaning they couldn’t convince consumers of neither breakthrough nor brand building.

GERMANY’s Top 3 IN 2023

While functionality seemed to have been the key to the hearts of German consumers last year, things look differently this time. Humorous and heartwarming ads score best in 2023. But how did we pick our top three? We believe ads should score well on both dimensions and cannot compensate for a low score on one and a high score on the other dimension.

Based on this, it became clear that EDEKA managed to reach the hearts of the consumers and caught their attention as best in class. The German retailer is followed by yet another competitor who already secured a place on the winning podium with the same ad, but in the UK – Lidl and their helpful raccoon. This year’s number three is Milka with close to top scores on brand building and an engagement score on the edge of the strong quadrants. Thus, the top 3 Christmas ads for Germany in 2023 are:

1. EDEKA (Last year’s number 3)
2. Lidl
3. Milka

EDEKA

The EDEKA ad is centred around the meat counter of an EDEKA supermarket. The purchase process begins when a customer spots a sample and gets into a non-verbal dialogue with the shop assistant. This non-verbal dialogue is fuelled by mostly murmurs of delight and gesture but not a single word is spoken. The customer soon gets joined by his partner who is equally delighted by the sample. The final scene is then set at the festive Christmas table when the bought piece of meat has been prepared and evokes yet more murmurs of delight, also by the guests.

In a simple 17-second ad, the German retailer thus manages to humorously communicate the quality of their products and their friendly shop assistants while centred around an important ingredient of most German Christmas dinners – meat. This ad proves that not many words are needed to have a clear and understandable message since it received the highest easy-to-understand scores of all tested ads.

Figure 2: EDEKA 2023

LIDL

Just like in the UK, Lidl features a raccoon as the main character in their ad. Unlike the usual portrayal of raccoons, it is here shown as a cute and helpful animal. 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 visible a lot in the video.

This resulted in high scores on brand recall including the highest score for top-of-mind brand recall. Further, we see top scores on enjoyment and feel-good as well as a high number of positive associations.

The raccoon clearly is the most liked element of the ad. A participant further elaborates: “The raccoon – he is sad since he is so lonely. That really touched me. And then he does his utmost to bring the cuddly toy back to the boy. Here, the story is suddenly turning for him and he doesn’t have to spend Christmas all alone.”

Figure 3: LIDL DE 2023MILKA

Milka’s commercial portrays the magic of Christmas that only children can see, starring a young boy and a Milka chocolate Santa. The boy and the blinking Santa are inseparable and go everywhere together. When decorating the Christmas tree, the tree topper slips out of the hands of the boy’s little sister and breaks. She flees to hide, worried over the accident. Her brother comes to sooth her and gifts her his trusty friend, the Milka chocolate Santa.

This ad manages to evoke a high amount of positive associations. It also scores high on brand fit and feels good despite the initially sad mishap. From the Christmas meta-analysis, we learned that snow, children and gifts are all elements that are found to be positively related to excitement, which is also reflected in this ad’s top excitement scores.

For the most liked elements of this ad, the values this ad conveys are mostly mentioned. Participants list ‘ solidarity and community’, ‘compassion’ and ‘ giving something so valuable to you as a present to someone you love’.

Figure 4: Milka DE 2023

ALDI (showing the childlike joy of adults during Christmas activities), Lindt (for their Christmas classic), Coca-Cola (with Celeste’s great Christmas song ‘Anyone Can Be Santa’), Amazon (an emotional, heartwarming story about three old friends who aren’t old enough for a sleigh ride), and Jacobs and Dr. Oetker, who re-used their previous year’s ads and scored similarly well on most metrics, are honourable mentions.

conclusion

In summary, we can draw a few general conclusions:

• A short ad with few words can have a big impact if executed well.
• A Christmas ad done well can also compete with our regular TV commercial benchmark.
• The split result for the ads tested in Germany is very striking, with half of the ads scoring close to or in the green area of our matrix data and thus above average of our TV benchmark, and the other half scoring clearly below average of our TV benchmark.

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