Rebecca Moore ponders on what the Christmas ads have to do with the stores they represent

Welcome to the run-up to Christmas. The decorations are eagerly awaiting their turn-on down Cornmarket.

The Boots sales assistants are spraying perfume on anyone who happens to walk by. And the war of the retail ads has begun.

Every year we’re caught in the crossfire between the top high street stores fighting it out over who can hire the best ad team and mate them with the best film crew. It’s tragic.

This year, fittingly, Sainsbury’s have dropped all pretence and submitted a war-themed film to the fray.

You’ve got to at least appreciate their honesty: make no mistake, the Christmas ad-off IS war and probably just as dirty as World War I trench tactics.

I’ll bet they clapped their hands together gleefully when they realised it was the WWI centenary. The battle starts earlier each year.

Even before the Coca Cola lorry train has trundled along the advert track – our high street giants start wheeling out their best offerings.

The ads are always intent on pulling on the heartstrings of their paying customers.

It seems they think nothing encourages showing you care like being reminded precisely how much you care, and nothing shows how much you care like spending copious amounts of cash you don’t have.

Last year we had The Bear and the Hare and this year, John Lewis offered up another animal spectacular in the form of Monty the penguin.

They really have a thing for mildly less sentient beings: ie, Christmas shoppers. John Lewis really shouldn’t bother showing Monty on the TVs of Oxford – since we don’t even have one of their hallowed department stores (why?!), there’s nowhere for me to go to express my penguin adoration. The day after I met Monty via the wonders of TV, social media went crazy with headlines like, ‘Sainbury’s put John Lewis to shame’.

No, don’t fret, they hadn’t unearthed some footage of their competitor unethically sourcing goods – they had merely released their own Christmas ad: a World War I inspired epic, which shows the British and German troops calling truce long enough over Christmas to share a game of football.

It was as though Sainsbury’s purposefully waited for John Lewis to fire the opening shots before storming into the breach. They cunningly squared up their heart-wrenching, nail-biting, tear-jerking war epic against a penguin.

Did I cry? Of course I did. I cry at tennis. Do I think it was well-made? Of course. Do I think it was artistic? Yes. Do I think it perfectly encapsulated Sainsbury’s shopping experience and product performance? Not exactly.

Of course, that’s not the point, is it? Ads aren’t meant to show you how amazing a product or store is any more.

They’re meant to make you have an emotional reaction so profound that the only sensible answer is to shop. As though the emotion you expend – and the void you open within yourself – while watching the latest ad epic can only be filled by the latest range of Christmas puds.

Go forth and conquer, shoppers.

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