The best Christmas ads in the UK in 2023

Article Lisette Kruizinga – de Vries

introduction

With DVJ´s cherished Christmas tradition, we end each year by delving into the enchanting world of Christmas ads. Already plenty of articles and opinions were shared online in which the authors declared different ads being the winners, from Coca-Cola by Kantar (Kantar, 2023) to Aldi by System 1. This latter party also announced Amazon to be in the top 3 whereas Campaign Magazine UK found this very same ad to be pretty poor. Thus, of course, we also want to see which ad performs best in our pre-test. We know that Christmas ads are often evaluated positively when watched in full length however, on breakthrough they often perform oppositely, with a poor score. Hence, we are curious whether the Christmas ads of this year are better able to break through the clutter than in the past years.

Given that our core markets are approaching the festive season at different rates, and we couldn’t stand still any longer after seeing all the UK ads, we decided to begin testing with the UK right away. This year, you can expect bite-sized articles for each country.

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´ creativity. This year we included many ads from different countries, testing around 100 Christmas ads in total and for the UK itself 22 ads!

This Year’s UK Christmas Ads Take the Crown, Outshining Previous Holiday Delights

We’ve compiled a UK Christmas BM with 40 ads as we’ve been testing Christmas ads for the UK for the fourth year in a row. This enables us to compare the variety throughout the years. One of the key findings we observe is that this year’s Christmas ads perform much better than the older ones, as 14 of the 22 ads had a score to be placed in the green part of our performance matrix. What does it mean? They both score high on brand building and breakthrough – something that is always a pain point for Christmas ads –, even above the Christmas benchmark score. Only three ads scored lower than the average Christmas advertisement from previous years.

So this sounds quite promising, but what happens if we compare these ads to our regular TV benchmark for the UK? 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 from the UK 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 UK TV commercials.

On the one axis, we have 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.

The brand-building dimension includes positive associations, excitement, and brand appeal. The performance matrix clearly shows how an ad compares to the benchmark and where the pain points are.

Figure 1: Performance matrix UK 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 Response (X) score and then plotted accordingly on the grid.

Something that can be directly observed from the performance matrix is that we do not see any ads in the strong and top quadrants. Only ASDA and ALDI fall on the border of the strong quadrants. This is again – as we know from previous years – caused by the breakthrough scores that are falling behind. Almost all ads, except for one, perform above average on brand building. Nonetheless, we can indicate three winners, and we see a lot of ads performing quite similarly (black oval in Figure 1).

UK´s Top 3 of this year

So let’s turn to the winning ads of this year. Three brands are trading places in the top three, with all last year’s winners returning. How did we get to this top 3? We believe ads should score well on both dimensions and cannot compensate for a low score on one dimension with a high score on the other dimension. Since there are no ads 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 as an example). While ALDI and ASDA have similar scores on breakthrough, ALDI outperforms ASDA on brand building, making ALDI’s ad perform overall better than ASDA’s. Thus, the top 3 Christmas ads for the UK in 2023 are:

1. Aldi (last year in 2^nd place)
2. ASDA (last year in 3^rd place)
3. Lidl (last year in 1^st place)

All three ads score highest on unaided brand recall and message recall, compared to the other tested ads of this year. They perform a bit lower on average duration; something we more often observe with Christmas ads. ALDI has very high scores on positive associations, enjoyment, excitement, fun, distinctiveness, understanding, and brand fit. ASDA and Lidl both perform lower on those aspects, which is also observable in the matrix. Some ads, such as Amazon, Morrisons, or M&S Food, appear further to the right in the matrix, indicating higher scores for brand building.

Aldi

ALDI’s ad is highly recognisable as it features the famous Kevin the Carrot, star in the short movie ‘Kevin and the Christmas Factory’. The brand logo is visible throughout the commercial, Kevin the Carrot has become their brand character, and of course, most people would know the movie ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. When looking at what people find most appealing in this ad, we see Kevin, the characters, and the reference to the movie coming back a lot. One comment that explains it well: “It’s really cute. It’s relevant at the moment too because of the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being released soon. Children will love this advert.” People also mentioned they liked the whole video and the rhyming. We learned from our meta-analysis on Christmas ads that an animated video and famous figures/characters are positively related to brand fit, a KPI the ALDI ad performs well on.

Figure 2: Aldi UK 2023

ASDA

ASDA’s commercial is shot at a fictive ASDA headquarters and quality testing centre and breathes the ASDA brand. It is starring Michael Bublé as ASDA’s Chief Quality Officer, who is testing the quality of all food without taking himself too seriously. Food is also at the centre of the commercial. When evaluating the open answers, Michael Bublé is by far the most often mentioned to be the most appealing element of this ad. Of course, the supermarket, the food and the use of the ASDA green are highly recognisable as well. All of these elements were found to improve unaided brand recall in our meta-analysis. It ends with the funny wordplay in the slogan: ‘ASDA, Make this Christmas incredibublé.’

Figure 3: ASDA UK 2023

Lidl

Lidl’s main character is a raccoon, which is portrayed as a cute animal despite the fact that it is frequently considered an unwanted guest. The logo is visible all along, leading to high scores on brand recall. The ad tells a heartwarming story about unusual friendships and being kind to each other, by being to a charity, Lidl’s Toybank. From the Christmas meta-analysis, we learned that snow, children and gifts are all elements positively related to excitement.

When looking at the open answers, the raccoon and the first mainly funny story that eventually turns into a heartwarming story are the elements that are most frequently mentioned as appealing. As one respondent said: “The determination of the raccoon to get that toy to where it needs to be says more about Christmas than just buying stuff.”

Figure 4: Lidl UK 2023

Among the honourable mentions are (in randomised order): Sainsbury’s (featuring the supermarket and, of course, lots of food), Sky (featuring different films), Argos (featuring products they are selling), M&S Food (commercials similar to previous years starring the little fairy), Vodafone (very short commercial in Vodafone red centred around a curious child), Amazon (an emotional, heartwarming story featuring three old friends not old enough for a sleigh ride), Coca-Cola (with Celeste’s great Christmas song ’Anyone Can Be Santa’), Boots (a child and her mother giving away gifts on their way to giving a gift to Santa), and Morrisons (with the singing and dancing oven gloves).

conclusion

In summary, we can draw a few general conclusions:

• The UK Christmas ads perform much better than Christmas ads from previous years. However, when compared to regular TV ads, we see that Christmas ads are once again falling behind in terms of breakthroughs.
• As in previous years, Christmas advertisements elicit positive associations and feelings and are distinct, enjoyable, and humorous. They leave the viewer with a positive impression.

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