The best Christmas ads of 2022

It is becoming a DVJ Christmas tradition that towards the end of the year, we test Christmas ads and evaluate which of them perform the best. It’s a magical time of the year – there are Christmas trees and lights everywhere, and the air is filled with the sweet aroma of gingerbread cookies that we munch on while watching TV, entertaining us with Christmas specials that warm even the most Scrooge of hearts. Of course, everyone has their favourite Christmas movie (mine is of course Love Actually!) and most of us also have a favourite Christmas advert too – who doesn’t get excited when the Coca-Cola “Holidays are coming” ad comes on? However, we wanted to look outside of personal preference, and we wanted to see which TV ads were the most successful across Europe and the US, by testing almost 100 Christmas ads.

How will people celebrate Christmas this year?

First, we wanted to know how people would celebrate Christmas, with whom, what they would do, and whether they would buy gifts. Does the current situation, with the war in Ukraine and the inflation crisis, affect their “Christmas feeling”? We chose to ask this across the suite of markets where we are present, from the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, and Sweden, as well as the US – the ‘originator’ of Christmas ads and more modern Christmas celebrations.

In total, a joyful 83% of people say they will celebrate Christmas this year, a very similar level to last year. The Swedish and British are most likely to indulge in the Christmas festivities, whereas less than 80% of Germans and Dutch will. For the Germans, this is probably influenced by 63% of people saying that the current situation is affecting their “Christmas feeling” to some or a large extent. Slightly lower, but never less importantly, 38% of the Swedish population admit they also feel the same way.

People mostly celebrate with their loved ones (42% are just with their partner, 77% are with their family, 16% are with their extended family and 12% celebrate with their friends). Interestingly, Christmas in Sweden is more often that not celebrated with extended family than in the other countries (34%) while in the US celebrating with friends is more popular (23%). When asked what people plan to do, the most popular response is to have lunch or dinner at home (79%), followed by celebrating with presents/gift-giving (54%). In the Netherlands, gift-giving on Christmas Eve is way less frequent as many families celebrate the children’s holiday, Sinterklaas, earlier in December. And so with the exception of the Netherlands, the majority of people buy Christmas presents, with clothing and toys being the most popular. Other popular Christmas activities include playing (board) games at home (25%) or participating in an outdoor activity (17%). Going out for lunch or dinner is also popular with the Dutch (26%), but not necessarily with the Swedes (7%).

The role of Christmas advertising

Looking at Christmas ads themselves, how are Christmas ads perceived by respondents in our markets? Our study was conducted in five countries: the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Sweden, and the US. As per the DVJ way, we created an ad reel with only Christmas ads that compete for the consumer’s attention in each market, and people can naturally watch each ad for as long as they want to. In this ‘unforced exposure,’ methodology people can skip the ads (for example, by zapping or getting something to drink) as they would when they watch TV at home. We then asked respondents what they can remember seeing in terms of the brands and the ad’s message, and finally, we showed each respondent two ads in full and let them evaluate them creatively. This year we included many ads from different countries, pre-testing around 100 Christmas ads in total! Because each respondent evaluated two ads in total, and while ensuring a minimum of 100 respondents per ad, the total number of respondents reached almost 5,000, making this the largest Christmas study we have ever conducted.

Table 1: Number of ads per country

People love Christmas ads but where is the brand linkage?

In all markets, and as seen in previous years, Christmas ads are able to evoke positive associations and feelings, and are distinctive, enjoyable, and often funny. Of course, this makes sense as they are all generally well made and tell a heart-warming, relevant Christmas story, which we all love to see and hear.

Again, as in previous years – the Christmas ads in general are less engaging and are less able to connect with the advertised brand. As ever, the average Christmas ad is longer than the average regular ad, which is reflected in relatively low engagement scores. And this year´s Christmas ads do not perform well on brand impact, do not fit with the brand or do not have a clear message. This is also the reason that only a few Christmas ads are able to score in ‘the green’ being ‘great’ or ‘top’ ads. We visually summarise this by plotting all tested ads from all countries on the performance matrix that we use as part of our pretesting methodology (see Figure 1 below). We use these matrices in our pretesting reports for clients to help them understand how their ads compare to our benchmark and whether their ads are ready to launch as is or need to be modified first.

Figure 1: Overview of all tested ads

On the one hand, we have the breakthrough dimension, which is based on our engagement and unaided brand and message recall metrics. Breakthrough is an important metric because advertisements must ‘break through the clutter’ in order for people to remember your brand and comprehend the message. An ad cannot be expected to have an actual impact on your brand if it is not sufficiently watched and remembered in the first place. Overall, Christmas ads do not score very well on these metrics as the largest part of the ads falls below the first two lines on the breakthrough dimension (red dashed line in Figure 1).

The brand-building dimension includes positive associations, excitement, and brand appeal, which most Christmas ads perform much better on, as Christmas ads are of course, generally focused on brand building and leaving a positive impression of the brand. This figure clearly shows where the pain points are, and is a universal truth in all tested markets.

Which ad is the best in each market?

The next question is ‘what are the best ads in each market’? We also visually summarised this by plotting all tested ads per country on separate performance matrices.

The dutch like humorous down-to-earth ads

For the majority of Dutch ads, they struggle to break through however, they do score better for brand building. There are two ads that share the top spot in the Netherlands:

                                                1. Kruidvat
                                                1. Aldi
                                                2. Jumbo

Figure 2: Overview of all tested Dutch Christmas ads

All three winning ads scored higher on brand recall and have a clearer message compared to the other tested ads. Kruidvat featured the already-known single mom Lies playing a major role. Furthermore, the Kruidvat logo is clearly visible during the whole ad and of course, the family visits a Kruidvat store. ALDI also has very clear branding with a nice, not too complicated story, fitting very well with the brand. In the Adformatie article, Plus was also declared a winner. When only looking at the brand-building dimension, the Plus ad is part of the top 3, however, it performs poorly on breakthrough, which illustrates the importance of testing in a natural environment.

Finally, Jumbo, re-introduced its well-known family making the ad directly recognisable in terms of branding as well. It’s worth noting that both Jumbo and Kruidvat had their Christmas ads pretested by DVJ and made some changes before launching the ad on television. When examining the results, it is clear that all 3 ads also scored high on evoking positive associations – particularly feel-good and brand appeal. All three winning ads have some humour and are down to earth, just like Dutchies themselves.

Brits love their ad´s characters

Figure 3 shows all the UK Christmas ads we tested this year. Many ads scored well on brand building as a large proportion of dots are more to the right of the graph, with only a handful truly breaking through. In the UK, the top 3 best Christmas ads of 2022 (and with very similar scores) are a trifecta of supermarkets:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Lidl
            2. Aldi
            3. Asda

All three winners performed highly on brand recall and message clarity, enjoyment, excitement, fun and evoked associations that are also mostly positive, unique, and relevant.

Looking at the winner, Lidl had clever branding with the Lidl bear being the centre of the ad and their brand logo being present at all times. ALDI brought back Kevin the Carrot – the star of 2020, with the current set-up, being based upon Kevin being “Home Alone”, and a creative that mimics the hugely successful film. Successfully ALDI’s ad is ranked second in terms of brand building, followed by Asda. Asda scores higher on breaking through by using the popular film character, Buddy the Elf, as performed by actor Will Ferrell, which appears to be working well. All three have one thing in common: a character is at the centre of the ad, and the ad feels like you’re watching a movie.

Figure 3: Overview of all tested UK Christmas ads

functionality as a top focus for german ads

The benchmark of German Christmas ads (Figure 4) shows a similar pattern however, the best-performing German ads are much less filmic than they are in the UK and seem to be much more functional focused. The top 3 for Germany are:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Jacobs
            2. Dr.Oetker
            3. EDEKA

Jacobs’ advertisement cleverly begins with its brand logo, followed by a family at home drinking coffee next to the Christmas tree bringing a really Christmassy feeling to it. As seen in Figure 4, the Jacobs ad really stands out in terms of brand building and scores especially high on evoking positive associations – likeability, relevancy, excitement, and brand appeal.

Dr. Oetker’s ad also focuses on functionality – this time, baking. Baking has a long tradition in German culture and it is something that most Germans enjoy doing during Christmas – baking ‘Weihnachtsplätzchen’. The Edeka ad begins like a movie which leads to immediately higher engagement scores. Then the supermarket comes in and clear visibility of the EDEKA brand brings confident scores for the ad.

Figure 4: Overview of all tested German Christmas ad

children and humour Conquer sweden

This year, we tested Swedish Christmas ads for the first time as we recently opened a new office in Sweden. The matrix for Sweden (Figure 5) shows a slightly different pattern, as we see quite a few ads on the high left, indicating they perform well on break-through but not so well on brand building. On the other hand, however, we see some ads that do perform extremely well in terms of brand building, such as the Liseberg ad, which is one of the top three ads. The top 3 in Sweden are:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Rusta
            2. Coca Cola
            3. Liseberg

Rusta is a Scandinavian home furnishings retailer that sells high-quality products at the best possible price, something that is clearly reflected in the ad. Coca-Cola’s  second-place is through low scores for credibility of the ad because of the main character and its quite bizarre journey– a dad who is delivering a Christmas letter to Santa at the North Pole. The ads, as usual, include Santa and his Coca-Cola truck that takes the dad back home. The Liseberg advertisement, on the other hand, is very clean and depicts two children on an adventure. In all three ads, children and humour play an important role with the Liseberg ad scoring the highest on both funniness and likeability. However, Liseberg’s ad falls short in terms of brand recall and message clarity.

Figure 5: Overview of all tested Swedish Christmas ads

USA: simple, short and efficient ads for the win

The benchmark of ads in the US, the originator of Christmas ads, presents similar patterns as in the other countries – advertisements lag in terms of a breakthrough but outperform in terms of brand building. The top three in the United States are:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. M&M’s
            2. Disney
            3. Starbucks

The M&M’s ad features its typical signature sign – the M&M’s and a good sense of humour. Disney’s advertisement is more of a movie, telling the story of a young girl and her family. She is becoming a big sister and the baby is ‘the gift’. We tested this Disney ad in all five countries, where it only performed strongly in the US. Finally, the Starbucks ad – which was again pretty simple but efficient, by showing Starbucks cups and happy people. As the ads (and brands) are so recognisable, they perform well on brand impact and they score very high on evoking positive associations – likeability, feel-good, and brand fit.

Figure 6: Overview of all tested US Christmas ads

conclusion

In summary, we can draw a few general conclusions based on this large multi-country Christmas study.

• As in previous years, it is clear that Christmas ads evoke positive associations and feelings, and are distinctive, enjoyable, and humorous.
• It is a universal finding that Christmas ads, on average, perform positively for brand building, but poorly on breakthrough.
• On top of this, there are some market-by-market differences. First of all, the Dutch like ads that have some humour and are down to earth best, similar to the Dutch themselves.
• The British are fond of long movie-like ads having a non-human character playing the lead role.
• The Germans are more useful and practical, preferring more functional Christmas ads – if you have coffee, nice cookies/cakes and your groceries, Christmas will become a success.
• The Swedes are fond of cute and funny ads that are not too heavy on the story and evoke some positive feelings featuring cute children.
• Americans like ads that are a bit simpler and shorter, with the exception for the Disney ad.

Even though we have discovered a clear pattern that different types of ads appeal to different cultures, we have one universal message fitting everyone: Here at DVJ, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2023!