Behind the windows of this very special Drum adVENT Calendar you’ll find a different member of the creative industry venting their feelings on a Christmas ad, or ads, they love or loathe. Today it’s founding partner and creative director at Fold 7, Ryan Newey.
When it comes to Christmas ads, we're all pretty good at pulling our claws out of our handbags and having a good old swipe at everything that they represent.
Charlie Brooker is the undoubted king of it, wheeled out by The Guardian in mid-November to deconstruct every single TV ad that's airing at the time before disappearing back into his house to spend quality time with Scrooge.
It's an opportunity to slag off the commerciality of it all, point out the fact that snow is never that white in real life, and lament the days when Christmas wasn't mentioned until 1 December.
This year though, there seems to be a bit of a gravitation towards a more gritty, realistic image of Christmas. Both Asda and Morrisons have released ads that show a certain sympathy for the logistical nightmare of Christmas, blowing the sugar coating off the whole affair and painting a picture of what Christmas really is to most families.
Waitrose have done their best to get in on the act but unfortunately the whole concept feels painfully translucent. Time to bring out the claws.
The big idea is that instead of Waitrose blowing all of their budget on "a fancy TV advert" they're giving the £1m that it would have cost, to charity. With such a squashed budget they only had enough money to hire a massively oversized studio for the day, with only two of the biggest chefs on television for company. The poor things didn't even have the budget to do more than one take, with the duo's terrific corpsing making it into the final cut. Lean times indeed.
It's worth mentioning that Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith reportedly waived their fees for the advert, leaving the door wide open for Waitrose to pump all of their savings into a vast media spend. Where better to launch your unglamourous TV advert than in the ad slot that is Britain's equivalent to the Super Bowl: The X Factor.
I can't help feeling the whole thing is a little bit smoke and mirrors.
Although it's highly admirable that Waitrose will be donating so much to charity - as they do every year - the ad feels over-engineered in its attempt to come across as under-engineered. If the premise of it is to make the point of not doing "a fancy TV advert" then why not go the whole hog?
Let's drop Heston and Delia, replace them with Waitrose's Marketing Director, and make sure that we don't start it off with a crane shot from 30ft…
Ryan Newey is the founding partner and creative director at Fold 7. Ryan founded Fold 7 in 1995 with Simon Packer and has helped develop brands such as Ted Baker, Boxfresh and Firetrap. Ryan has provided extensive exposure to the retail and youth markets leading to long-term relationships with the likes of Orange, Nokia and Cat Footwear. As creative director he leads integrated campaigns for global brands such as Nike and Carlsberg.
Just like the ambassador we're really spoiling you with the December 5 adVENT on Ferrero Rocher from Mark Freeman, creative partner at Movement.