Bill Lyne, senior copywriter at Gratterpalm, discusses what makes a great Christmas ad for him...including one which was never made...
One of the greatest Christmas adverts ever created, if not one of the greatest adverts ever created, was produced in America over twenty years ago.
It was a poster.
It was for a certain tight-fitting jeans company.
And it featured a one word headline.
Can you guess what that was?
Bumhug.
Absolute genius.
Yes it’s a pun. But by Mary’s boy child, it’s a corking one. (I challenge anyone who thinks puns are lazy advertising to conjure up wordplay as good as this.) And the poster still makes me laugh when I think of it today. (I just hope the creative team received a sizeable festive bonus.)
Its secret?
It’s original.
And that, in a roasted chestnut shell, is what makes a great Christmas ad. You can talk until the reindeers come home about how a festive ad should be four parts humour to two parts sentiment to three parts feel-good - but if it’s not original, if it doesn’t have that genuine Christmas magic, then it’s last year’s wrapping paper.
Now that may seem to be an obvious thing to say, and something that should be true on every brief advertising professionals work every day of the year, but rather like peace on earth and goodwill to all men, such a notion seems to need particular reinforcement at this time of year.
Because let’s face it, Christmas is such a well trodden, snow-rutted path of cliché, stereotype, mush and sentiment that finding a fresh angle on it can be like trying to book a spare room in Bethlehem circa 2012 years ago.
I mean, how many of today’s crop of by-the-book fake snowball throwing, tinsel-teethed celebrity filled epics will be remembered come Boxing Day, let alone in 20 years?
So, if agencies want to make a Christmas advert which is truly original and great – rather than just an acceptable stocking filler – how do they go about it?
Well, perhaps Christmas should be that one time of year when the normal rules and procedures don’t apply. (A bit like when the TV schedule goes haywire or when entrenched armies stop shooting each other and start hoofing footballs around.)
Just imagine what would happen if all the research, the demographics, the box-ticking, the analysis and the usual necessities took - if not a back seat – but perhaps a passenger seat in the merry sleigh ride of marketing and gave creativity its head just a few frosty days.
Would it be chaos? Would sales plummet? Or might we suddenly get a lot more engaging festive ads?
After all, did the planners and the client suddenly notice an amazing correlation between wearers of tight fitting denims and readers of the works of Mr Dickens? Or did they just go: “Great pun. Let’s get it made.”?
Now I may be walking in a cloud cuckoo wonderland, but I like to think that’s exactly what happened when all my favourite Christmas adverts first looked up out of their respective mangers.
None of my other favourite Christmas ads come close to Mr Scrooge’s jean endorsement for sheer mirth of course, but each one is special in its own way...