I remember last year well. My belly was swollen with child, my Boy was not yet 3 and, therefore, still rather sweet than otherwise, Christmas music was playing on every speaker and the John Lewis Christmas advert with the penguin was on repeat on my laptop for The Boy’s amusement. Not so this year. We’ve watched the ‘Man in the Moon’ just twice and then he completely lost interest and hasn’t mentioned it since. Yesterday we were notified of the new Sainsbury’s ad and, oh dear John Lewis, you’ve lost your crown. Mog the cat in all her CGI glory, thankfully resurrected for Christmas 2015 – walking tree and all.
It’s only 10.30am but we’ve probably seen it five or six times this morning already and the only reason we’re not still watching the damn thing is because I wrestled my laptop back off The Boy in order to write this post!
In my humble opinion JL is flogging a bit of a dead horse. OK, so it’s a girl this year, not a boy, and it’s a Man on the Moon, not a penguin, but there’s still a child with an imaginary friend, a saccharine Ellie Goulding-style cover version of a golden oldie, a touching sentimental act and lots of Christmas sparkle. I have no issue with sparkle (I’m not a Grinch or anything) but I felt like this year’s ad was just a tired remake of the 2014 one, with some rather clunky product placement to boot (check out the scene with the scooter) whereas the Sainsbury’s ad was something completely new and different – from John Lewis and from their own, rather excellent, 2014 offering.
I’ve embedded all four of the adverts below so you can compare and contrast for yourself, but I think you’ll agree the Mog one has something special about it in the same way Monty the penguin did last year. Plus, yaknow, it gets The Boy’s seal of approval. Think the penguin still wins overall, though – I just had to view all the vids to get the embed code and I was made to watch Monty the Penguin twice more before I could finish. So Sainsburys may have won this year, but JL win over the last two. Can’t say fairer than that. But next year, John Lewis – you’re going to have to bring it.
2015
2014
Monty the Penguin – still our favourite. What do you think?
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