Have yourself a schmaltzy little adfest

Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman posed a very good question last week.

When exactly did Christmas ads become such a big deal in the UK?

She was referring specifically to the much-awaited and over-hyped commercial for retailer John Lewis from adam&eveddb (“so soppy eyed it makes the Werther's Originals advert look like a gritty Ken Loach film”), but other high street names have been keen to get a slice of the action. Take M&S, for instance. Last year, they enlisted the support of all the X-Factor finalists to wish upon a star and, in 2012, have created a slightly jarring amalgam of different musical ‘hits’ to illustrate their broad range of products and target markets.

Conferring with my French students from Sup de Pub, we’re agreed that there’s no real equivalent to this phenomenon on the other side of the English Channel. In Paris, people don’t sit around waiting for ads featuring peripatetic, lovestruck snowmen. Freeman likened the hype to the American Super Bowl commercials, which – to a large extent – have become as an important a part of the sporting extravaganza as the game itself. Perhaps November is the new December? Once the John Lewis ad has arrived, Christmas is done.

From a marketing perspective, I really admire what the department store has done. They’ve created an ad which is more than an ad. It’s a cultural artefact which generates free PR. From a creative perspective, I am slightly frustrated by the way festive advertising has to run to an inevitable formula, which might be described as clichéd, saccharine, romantic and relentlessly optimistic.

Remember last year’s John Lewis ad, in which a young boy waits eagerly for December 25th, just so that he can hand his delighted parents a present? You won’t be surprised to learn that it led to parodies, such as this enchanting Yuletide vision from cabaret stars Bourgeois & Maurice. In 2012, a year wiser, the generous young lad probably didn’t bother waiting. He gave his parents the present as soon as the John Lewis snowman commercial went on air.

In an attempt to find an antidote to Christmas ads past, present and future, I’ve been on a hunt for those that treat the subject in a slightly different way. Saatchi & Saatchi’s recent commercial for Asda has run into some controversy for depicting mothers as the only people involved in organising the festive celebrations. Personally, I feel the ad is likely to be well researched and is designed to resonate with the target audience of busy, put-upon mums who feel they’re expected to do everything, while their husbands simply train their mince pies on the telly. It’s a welcome slice of realism served up with the annual plum pudding.

Asda’s rival Morrisons is not to be outdone. They take the same basic premise – that mum has far too many challenges to cope with – but give it a surreal twist. The female star of their commercial is seen grappling with a turkey in a wrestling ring and writing Christmas cards to people she met on holiday in Corfu back in the 1990s. So far, this ad has my vote as the most refreshing take on the seasonal celebrations that I’ve seen. It still ends, however, with a good ladle full of schmaltz over the family dinner. Mum may be frustrated and bewildered by what Christmas throws at her, but she ‘wouldn’t have it any other way’.

In the digital age, some people argue that the old story-telling model of advertising is falling apart. Rather than buying neatly packaged fables about brands, we instead look for tangible experiences that add real value to our lives.

Last month, George Prest – Executive Creative Director of R/GA London, wrote in The Guardian that we are ‘living in a world where non-fiction is as important as fiction’. He argued that the way brands behave is more important than what they say and the ‘metaphors they weave’. It’s a very interesting perspective, but one which is severely challenged by Christmas. In a sense, the whole season is built around myths. Not just the obvious ones such as Santa Claus, but the others we cherish about family, community and the altruistic spirit of humanity. This may be fiction that consumers are reluctant for advertisers to abandon.

Props to the old skool guerrillas

I'm looking forward to giving a couple of evening lectures this week at Chelsea College of Art & Design to students from University of the Arts London and French advertising school Sup de Pub. The topic is guerrilla and ambient advertising and I'll be making the point that we're actually standing on the shoulders of giants.

As well as talking about the adventurous marketing antics of people such as 19th-century circus entrepreneur Phineas Taylor Barnum and Sir Thomas Lipton of tea and infusion fame, I'll be delving into some antiquarian literature. I was recently reading the classic text by Henry Sampson on the history of advertising, which was written in 1874. That's right. Written in 1874. He talks about the problems created by flyposting and has a section on the stencilling of marketing messages on pavements. Unsurpisingly, Victorian police and magistrates started taking a dim view of this kind of guerrilla activity.

With the help of H G Wells, Mr Sampson would have felt right at home if he'd transported himself to 2011. According to the San Francisco Examiner, the City Attorney of the west coast town is currently pursuing Levi's for their sidewalk graffiti on behalf of the Dockers brand. Perhaps there really is nothing new under the sun?

How would the French save Gordon Brown?

I'm a great believer in giving my students some difficult tasks. It helps to separate the men from the boys or, very often, the women from the girls. Or, in this particular instance, les dames from les filles, as the class in question came from Sup de Pub - the leading advertising school in Paris.

The brief I gave yesterday morning to a group of would-be account handlers and planners was to save Gordon Brown from catastrophic defeat with just 24 hours of the British election campaign remaining. They only had a few hours to work on a problem that would frustrate even the most seasoned admen and political pundits.

There were a number of interesting ideas for tactical media, including the distribution of Oyster card holders at London tube stations tracked on social media such as Twitter and Foursquare. We had a lengthy debate as to whether such giveaways constituted a bribe under electoral law. To my shame, having stood on a couple of occasions as a parliamentary candidate, I was a little vague on this point, but thought we were probably on dodgy ground.

Creatively the strongest campaign idea was one which used iconic British buildings as a metaphor for the economy. We saw Tower Bridge crumbling, with a warning that you shouldn't dump the architect of the recovery at a critical moment. The argument was that we could change the building to reflect a local landmark in key marginal constituencies, which I thought worked very well.

Strategically, there were even braver suggestions from other groups. Recognising the gaffe-prone Gordon Brown as a source of many of Labour's problems, some suggested creative work which had a strong 'mea culpa' theme. Or we could go a stage further - removing Gordon Brown from the equation entirely by admitting publicly that the election wasn't about just one man. It was about everybody else. Coming hot on the heels of Labour Ministers' calls for tactical voting and a Labour candidate suggesting Brown was the worst-ever Prime Minister, the strategy had a plausible, if rather desperate, feel to it.

One thing's for sure. It's always good to get the impartial observations of outsiders on any advertising campaign. And objectivity is often in short supply when it comes to elections.