Last updated: ‘Tis the season for… manipulating emotions: Holiday marketing mayhem

‘Tis the season for… manipulating emotions: Holiday marketing mayhem

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One of the best things about Christmas is that it’s much more about sentimentality than mince pies and mulled wine. It used to be that I’d find myself wiping away a tear at the end of the Boxing Day movie, but now not even the ad breaks are safe.

To some, the guilty pleasures of this time of year are about spoiling the kids or feeding brussel sprouts to the mother-in-law’s dog.

For me, I’ve got another one to confess: it’s allowing myself to be marketed to, and secretly enjoying the emotional manipulation. This could perhaps be simplified to loving Christmas adverts.

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Holiday marketing and adverts: Bring on the emotions

In the UK, Christmas adverts are something of an institution. There’s probably more buzz about them on social media than there is for the TV specials.

It’s like Best In Show for the above-the-line agencies and big brands. John Lewis has won the rosette for the last few years, with The Bear and the Hare in 2013, Monty the Penguin in 2014 – and this year it has outdone itself with The Man on The Moon, a genius characterization in which the (lonely old) man on the moon is given a telescope by a sweet little girl so he can feel closer to earth.

All of these adverts engender an emotional response. They combine whimsy and nostalgia with just the right blend of soft focus and soppy song lyrics. Critics, of course, are quick to judge, rivals are quick to imitate, and as much fun is had sharing the spoofs as the originals, but the point is, they engage without – to my mind – watering down the impact of the original.

And there’s an element of altruism too. The John Lewis team partnered with British charity Age UK on their Christmas appeal to raise awareness of just how lonely this time of year can be for older people.

German supermarket Edeka took a similar line with an advert that seems to have had most of Europe sobbing gently into their Kleenex – if you don’t recognize a part of your own character in the Edeka ad, there’s something wrong with you.

Both of these ads make a point outside the corporate message, and they do it beautifully. Cynics can snigger all they want but anything that stops us thinking about ourselves at this time of year, particularly if it encourages us to simply do something good, is alright with me.

But what’s the shelf life of all these adverts? If every year they keep turning the emotional screws tighter and tighter, so slick they’ll do themselves an injury as we end up overwhelmed by a deluge of pre-prepared ‘behind the scenes of the OFFICIAL advert’ videos and ‘get the music from the OFFICIAL advert’ downloads – where can they go next?

Are they in danger of doing a Fonzie and Jumping the Shark?

To be honest, I’ll enjoy them until they do. It’s not my problem for now. Well, so long as the Sainsbury advert when the cat burns the house down isn’t on too much.

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