The Christmas dinner is a near-religious experience for many British households. Every family has their own method, their own view of how it should be done; things that absolutely need to be there (pigs in blankets) and negotiables (Brussels sprouts, which I’m firmly against).
So it makes sense for a supermarket to make that the focal point of their festive advert – as Waitrose has done.
Set to a score of Frank Sinatra’s stone-cold classic It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas, Waitrose takes us from January 1 all the way through to December 2, through the eyes of the farmers growing the delicious food that ends up on our plates.
Working from the crack of dawn, through storms and sunshine (one scene shows a pair of farmers competing to see who has the best shirt tan-line) and blustery autumn weather, we eventually see the produce make its way into the supermarket’s warehouses and onto a family Christmas table via a hamper of Waitrose Essentials goodies.
As said family tuck into an implausibly huge feast, a little boy bursts into tears because he’s been denied the last pig-in-blanket (we’ve all been there) – only for his big sister to give him hers instead (unlikely). As Waitrose tells us, it’s the “care we put in that makes Christmas this special”. And cut.
There’s not a lot of depth to this one, and despite the little boy’s tears at the end, there’s definitely no attempt to make the Christmas advert a weepy heartstring-tugger - that’s the remit of Waitrose’s partners, John Lewis.
That’s not to say it’s awful. The ad itself makes pleasant enough watching, and is as warm and comforting as sitting in front of a log fire. Almost all of the earlier shots (featuring the farmers) have a kind of screensaver-esque quality to them, and it’s nice to see the focus being put on the people who bring all that lovely produce to our plates at Christmas, often working in grim conditions to do so.
But will it have people streaming into the stores? Waitrose stands for quality (and I’m sure a Waitrose Christmas dinner would taste amazing) but in a cost of living crisis people may well be looking at cheaper options. This ad’s going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to get people in store this year.
