Like your favourite (or not) uncle after a few festive sherries, Lidl the supermarket loves a good pun.
The hero of their new Christmas marketing campaign is a stuffed toy in a branded jumper, pithily named “Lidl Bear”. Rather shockingly, he’s not going on sale in Lidl stores: instead, Lidl is creating a charitable fund, Lidl Bear’s Toy Bank, in its name instead.
All of this means that they were firmly camped on the festive highground already, even if the advert was bad - but actually, it’s rather good. An adorable teddy bear is dressed in an accidentally shrunk-down Lidl knitted jumper and taken in-store for some shopping by his pint-sized owner.
Naturally, said bear becomes a roaring success, eclipsing even Paddington’s star as he climbs the giddy heights of fame. He has his photo taken with a range of Lidl’s Christmas produce (of course), but from there his career takes off, with him gracing a music mag, a red carpet and a billboard marketing campaign. He even writes a book: the brilliantly titled “Laid Bear: A Lidl Bear-ography”.
All this cuteness could feasibly wither and die if not applied with a sure hand, and so it proves here: Lidl leavens the sugar in this Christmas cake with lashings of humour, especially as the bear remains stubbornly stuffed and inanimate.
“You’ve changed, Bear!” shouts a snapping paparazzo, as a sunglasses-clad model carries the sunglasses-clad teddy into a limousine; dancers cavort in the background as the bear sits, immobile in the seat of a private jet. Who is Lidl Bear wearing? reporters asks as he stands, stiff, on the red carpet – clearly Lidl fancies itself the fashionable choice when it comes both to food and to knitted jumpers.
But of course, fame is a fickle thing, and by the end of the ad, our furry chum has realised what really matters: getting back to his young owner, who’s been missing him and who puts out a call for him on television to come home.
When the big day dawns, as she makes her way past a table laden with Christmas food (presumably bought from Lidl), there’s an extra surprise waiting for her: the bear has parachuted in to see her, Bond style and is now dangling from her windowsill.
As the voiceover says: “Big hug. Tasty food. Narrative complete.” It is indeed: It’s all we really want for Christmas.
