The last few years seems to have seen the TV adverts for major retailers slowly move up in the ‘important things related to Christmas’ rankings. I’m not saying the John Lewis Christmas advert is more significant than who is the Christmas number one, but I think it’s fair to say which is the bigger news story right now. To be fair to the Christmas number one it is the eighth of November.

The eighth of November seems to be the date for the unleashing of this year’s Christmas advert. Is there an agreement for things like this? Did Boots, M&S, John Lewis and the others get together to agree when “this Christmas shit gets real”. There’s a lot of people complaining about how early all this is happening. Maybe

I made some tweets about the John Lewis advert (see below). Pretty special when an advert makes you think about the mid-to-long term marketing plan of a retailer. There has been noticeable shift away from an advert which features products JL offer and just integrates the annual advert in the very Christmasness of the British consumer Christmas. This year’s is somewhere between the old adverts for Cadbury’s Caramel and a Disney cartoon, with more than a hint of Yogi’s First Christmas.

Sat what you want about John Lewis and their christmas adverts and say what you want about marketing being wankers but some of them…

— Classic Phil (@house78) November 8, 2013

…clearly can achieve objectives and it’s clear that their mid-long term goal for a couple of years has been to make JL synonymous…

— Classic Phil (@house78) November 8, 2013

..with Christmas and they seem to be getting there. No real reference to humans, shopping or John Lewis (apart from logo). And despite…

— Classic Phil (@house78) November 8, 2013

..many people hating their trite use of cover versions many more people love them.

— Classic Phil (@house78) November 8, 2013

But as far Lilly Allen covering Keane. Well yeah, they can fight their own battle on the lack of imagination at play there.

Bonus material:

Do you remember my brilliant script for a John Lewis christmas ad last year?

I’ve been experimenting with what I can do with my new computer.

The sad thing is I think these are not too embarrassing to share on this blog. The first one is me testing the ability to make a presentation* and the second one is testing make a webcast on YouTube (I don’t know why I say that at the end but it tickled me for some reason).

*Yeah, I can’t explain the accent or content. Sorry. Interesting trivia: The noise in the background is 2 Fast 2 Furious.