Coca-Cola's Christmas advert? Pfft, vans are so 2005, guys. The hotly anticipated John Lewis Christmas adverts of recent years seem to drum up the most excitement amongst online communities these days, with this year's version using animation for the first time to tell a tale of wintertime friendship and spirit.
Coca-Cola’s Christmas advert? Pfft, vans are so 2005, guys. The hotly anticipated John Lewis Christmas adverts of recent years seem to drum up the most excitement amongst online communities these days, with this year’s version using animation for the first time to tell a tale of wintertime friendship and spirit.
Created by adam&eveDDB, the agency responsible for the retailers 2012 and 2009 ads, this year’s story looks at best friends the Hare and the Bear, the latter of whom has to leave his hopping friend to go into hibernation the moment the snowflakes begin to fall, missing out on Christmas for another year.
That is, he might have done if the winter-loving hare hadn’t stepped in to make sure his sleepy friend experienced some magical cheer on that most special of snowy days…
http://youtu.be/XqWig2WARb0
The new advert, entitled “The Bear & The Hare”, faced much pressure after the roaring success of 2012’s ad, “The Journey”, a goose-pimple raising tale about two snowmen who reunited to the powerful ballad “The Power of Love” by Gabrielle Alpin, which was so popular it rocketed Alpin’s single to the top of the charts and helped generate £1074m of incremental sales and £261m of incremental profit in just over two years.
http://youtu.be/0N8axp9nHNU
Produced alongside a £7 million Christmas campaign from the retailer giant, 2013’s story about the two forest friends and their special Christmas is set to Lily Allen’s soft cover of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” and is due to premiere on TV as a dedicated two minute ad break during Saturday night’s X Factor.
Following John Lewis’ new tradition to debut its Christmas ads online before showing them to TV audiences, which rival retailer M&S has copied this year, the campaign #bearandhare has already taken the Twitter community by storm. The Bear and Hare even have their own individual and joint Twitter accounts!
An impressive range of support for the 2013 Christmas campaign includes an eBook and hardback book, Christmas card maker, YouTube competition, social media, in-store and windows, merchandise, digital outdoor projection and soundtrack single.
The ad has already reduced a particularly sentimental member of our editorial team to tears, with Twitter user @OfficialJassa1h describing the ad as “Beautifully simple”, and @nickthorpe4h commenting “The best thing about the #bearandhare ad is that its a completely integrated campaign. John Lewis is nailing it.”
Spreading Christmas love via social media has now become the preferred practice of many retail giants, with the Telegraph reporting Steve Sharp, the marketing chief at M&S, as saying: “It used to be that people would watch the ad and then find it on the internet. It is now the other way around. It’s as if we throw a pebble into the pond and watch the ripples spread out via social media.”
Last year’s ad saw such success, the Institution of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) & Thinkbox even chose to create a documentary entitled ‘John Lewis: Making the Nation Cry… and Buy’. Check it out below.
Defining major events by adverts is not a life. You need to get out more.
This is an ad many of us will never see – we use Sky+ and OnDemand neatly removes all the ads.
It is an ad even fewer of us will care about. Now that communicaiton has moved beyond broadcast, we have multiple sources of information and inspiration – and ads are the least trusted.
This is the first time I’ve seen the 2013 ad (I live outside the UK, so won’t catch it on TV) and the notion told through the story is touching, even if the ad itself doesn’t make me want to buy anything.
The choice of animation (which looks a bit dated now) is interesting too — it can’t be a coincidence that it mimics the style of Watership Down to appeal to a certain generation of buyers?
Overall, I think it’s a good example of engaging viewers with storytelling portrayed in a targeted way. I’m not sure of the ad’s effectiveness in converting them to buyers, but it’s certainly worked in terms of raising brand awareness, judging by its popularity.
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