So which is your favourite? The young magician? Kevin the Carrot? Or maybe, like the Great British Public, this year you really couldn’t give a flying fir-tree about the annual avalanche of Christmas commercials, because In 2020, people are much less interested than they were twelve months ago. 35% less interested according to the Google Trends data. This chart shows the huge drop in Google searches for “X Christmas advert” where X is any one of John Lewis, Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Argos, Lidl, Boots or Very.
The total searches may be down, but we can still look at the battle of the brands to see who’s coming out on top. John Lewis has taken a different approach this year, but it keeps its place as the most-searched for Christmas commercial, way out in front of all other brands.
Sainsbury’s is in second, although depressingly this is largely owing to a huge spike in searches following media reports of racists attacking the brand’s campaign for using a Black family.
Beyond John Lewis and Sainsbury’s, the battle to be ‘best of the rest’ has been won by McDonald’s, reminding us to stay Forever Young and keep the spirit of Christmas alive with a bag of reindeer treats.
Yet there’s no escaping the fact that in overall terms, the public’s interest in these Christmas blockbusters appears to be on the slide. John Lewis hit its peak in 2016 with Buster the Boxer and this year’s drop in interest is particularly severe.
This seems to be a general trend rather than a brand-specific one - searches for “Kevin the Carrot” this year are just 25% of what they were in 2018.
Not a great year for Christmas advertising then, but the other way to look at this is that the brands themselves have been reluctant to go ‘all out’ in a year when so many lives have been devastated by COVID. Some of the work feels small and apologetic in its ambition, and when it comes to production, restrictions on shooting through lockdown can hardly have helped. Let’s hope that in 2021, a newly-vaccinated nation will be readying itself for the Christmas celebration to end all celebrations, and that a confident, celebratory set of commercials re-engages public interest in our festive advertising.