Bob CollinsI’m late this year getting around to pointing out the best Christmas ads of the season so let’s get to it.
John Lewis, the UK department store, is usually at the top of the heap each year. 2017 is no exception.
This category is mostly a British thing. The ads are better and richer there for some reason.
Do we Americans not have the ability to imagine that a carrot would take a bullet — the role is played by a pea — for another carrot?
Or that a father would rescue his daughter from stage fright?
A Christmas without Paddington Bear? Not in 2017.
Debenham’s — another department store — went with the old boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-tries-the-Internet-to-get-girl-back cliche.
They’re all very nice, of course, but none of them comes close to our favorite from our 2015 review. One can only go to the fake-your-own-death-to-get-the-kids-to-visit well once.
It’s not as if U.S. marketers can’t come up with the innovative holiday ad. Amazon took honors in our list last year. Timely. Relevant. Thought-provoking. All things that were “in”. Last year.
It’s the sort of theme that might’ve played well in a year like this one.
But Amazon punted and went with singing boxes instead.
This wasn’t the year we needed singing boxes.
