{"id":12202,"date":"2025-11-21T14:51:53","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T14:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=12202"},"modified":"2025-11-21T14:51:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T14:51:53","slug":"tis-the-season-for-christmas-adverts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/tis-the-season-for-christmas-adverts\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Tis the season\u2026 for Christmas adverts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr Jake Monk Kydd reviews the impact of Christmas promotions.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some the arrival of new Christmas adverts is a much-anticipated event, all part of the Christmas hype and excitement.\u00a0The Christmas season seems to open as soon as midnight rolls around on Halloween.\u00a0 For those who would like, at least, to keep Christmas in December this is a whole month too soon.\u00a0For retailers and many brands though the pressure to \u2018go big and go early\u2019 is enormous and one that cannot be resisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figures from the Advertising Association suggest that for the last quarter of 2025 advertising spend in the UK is to be around \u00a312 billion. In addition to Christmas this period covers the usual promotions, seasonal promotions, and Black Friday promotions too of course.\u00a0From 2024 this represents a \u00a3800 million, or 6.7%, increase and far higher than the rate of inflation.\u00a0So why spend so much?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly all adverts need to be commercially viable and not only pay for themselves but make a return for the retailers too.\u00a0Good news for many in that case as for big retailers in the UK for every \u00a31 spent on advertising an estimated \u00a34.10 is recouped with a return of around \u00a31.90 for smaller retailers.\u00a0For individual brands the returns can be even higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Wallace and Gromit are said to have saved Wensleydale cheese from permanently disappearing from delicatessen shelves, this year\u2019s Waitrose Christmas advert is expected to do wonders not only for the store but also the featured Sussex Charmer cheese.\u00a0The Waitrose 2025 Christmas advert, The Perfect Gift, is already winning plaudits for being the best ever seasonal promotion and has been framed as a \u2018mini romcom\u2019 (complete with an opening byline from the master of the romcom, Richard Curtis).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waitrose have managed to produce a promotion that meets or exceeds all criteria.\u00a0The casting of Joe Wilkinson, fresh from a star turn on BBC\u2019s Celebrity Traitors, and Keira Knightley, forever associated with Christmas romcom Love Actually, is inspired.\u00a0The production values are high, and the gentle narrative perfectly tells a story while integrating the Waitrose brand.\u00a0All of this while becoming a news item and shared widely online.\u00a0Older viewers may regard these as tv adverts but in reality around 84% of promotional spend is online, this can make exposure to and sharing content easy and result in greater reach for the brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Waitrose advert uses humour to good effect to further underscore the feel-good factor.\u00a0There are pitfalls for retailers here. Using comedy in promotions can go disastrously wrong.\u00a0This is best shown with the Sainsbury\u2019s Christmas promotion featuring John Cleese in a Basil Fawlty-esque role in the 1990s.\u00a0Not only did the attempt become labelled as the most irritating of the year by some, perversely this can work in the retailers favour at times, but more importantly Sainsbury lost market share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using emotion, nostalgia, and comedy can be very impactful.\u00a0 The challenge for all brands is getting the right balance.\u00a0The challenge for Waitrose is bettering Kiera and Joe in next Christmas\u2019s promotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Jake Monk Kydd is an honorary senior lecturer in the School of Business, Law and Policing<\/a><\/u>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Jake Monk Kydd reviews the impact of Christmas promotions. For some the arrival of new Christmas adverts is a much-anticipated event, all part of the Christmas hype and excitement.\u00a0The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":12206,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[533,3902],"tags":[1257,4734,3785],"class_list":["post-12202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-research","tag-advertising","tag-christmas-adverts","tag-retail"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Jeanette Earl","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2025\/11\/Christmas-film-tape.jpg","postExcerpt":"Dr Jake Monk Kydd reviews the impact of Christmas promotions. For some the arrival of new Christmas adverts is a much-anticipated event, all part of the Christmas hype and excitement.\u00a0The […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12210,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12202\/revisions\/12210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}