Selling Christmas in 2020

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2020

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do brands strike the right tone in their Christmas adverts when many consumers have taken a financial hit? Elizabeth Hotson goes on an advertising odyssey and talks to Sarah Traverso, Group Director of Integrated Marketing and Content for Coca-Cola in the US, a company so central to Christmas advertising that some think Coca Cola invented Santa Claus. A myth quickly debunked by Ann Christine Diaz, the creativity editor at Advertising Age. What is the secret behind a successful Christmas campaign? A question for Simon Lloyd from DentsuMB, who was until recently the creative director of the advertising agency behind the John Lewis department store Christmas adverts. Global advertising spend is expected to contract by 10% ( $63bn) this year and with people spending so much time at home during the pandemic, the focus has gone to online advertising and social media, as James McDonald, Head of Data at the World Advertising Research Center, explains. Producer: Elizabeth Hotson

(Photo: socially-distanced Santa Claus in a mask in New York City, Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	The sound of a breast band playing Christmas songs in one of London's busiest shopping areas
0:10.8	normally heralds a mad scrum of festive buying. But this year the mood's different and a lot of
0:17.0	shopping's gone online. So what does that mean for the big Christmas advertising campaigns
0:22.2	we've come to expect? I'm Elizabeth Hotson and in today's Business Daily, I'll be finding out
0:28.3	how advertisers have had to adapt. When I shot John Lewis last year, it was 32 degrees. We were all
0:33.7	wearing t-shirts in an August bank holiday weekend, but staring at a little medieval town covered in snow.
0:39.6	And no matter how surreal that was,
0:41.3	I don't think anybody realised how surreal this Christmas would be.
0:44.4	And how big brands are reflecting the emotions of a society jaded by the coronavirus pandemic.
0:52.8	I gave my sister a really terrible haircut.
0:56.2	What if I'm on the naughty list?
0:57.6	Relax.
0:58.7	After this year, Tesco says there is no naughty list.
1:02.4	This is Business Daily from the BBC.
1:07.6	It might be a pandemic, but there's still presents to buy.
1:10.8	And here on Oxford Street, London's famous shopping mile, the department store windows are as jolly as ever.
1:17.9	I'm outside John Lewis, which here in the UK and globally has become famous for its TV ads.
1:23.7	And you can hear this year's behind me.
1:28.8	So what makes a great Christmas ad?
1:31.5	Well, you might think the answer's pretty simple.
1:34.1	It's one that sells stuff.
1:37.5	She's thought of everyone else.
	...

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