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04/11/2021

Ad Break- The John Lewis Christmas Advert 2021

 

Launched a week earlier than usual the annual John Lewis advert lands at a time when the future of the retailer has never been less certain. A combination of factors including the pandemic lockdowns and the shift to more online shopping as well as decline of the department store model mean we don’t know how many more John Lewis Xmas adverts there will be. The 2021 one is called `Unexpected Guest` and when I happened to go into the shop this afternoon, unaware of the ad being launched, it was playing on a number of large television sets dotted around the place. It debuted to a wider audience on ITV tonight at 8.15pm. In some ways it is the archetypal John Lewis ad yet as Xmas is all about archetypes and traditions that seems appropriate enough. A spot on choice of song and a lightness of touch means the ad doesn’t appear to try too hard and for me is the best they’ve done for several years.

 


Created by dam&eveDDB and directed by Mark Molloy it sees a boy (named in the press release as Nathan though not on screen) witness an alien ship crash rather beautifully through grey clouds. Rushing into the woods to find out more, he meets an alien girl (apparently called Skye) and they develop a sort of brief friendship as he teaches her about mince pies, throwing snowballs and, it seems, sneaking a huge xmas tree out of the house that he manages to plug in even before she makes the lights shimmer. It snows on cue of course. Finally, she has to go but not before he gives her a gift of his twinkling light covered jumper to which she responds with a quick kiss before she zooms off. The tag line reads `For a Christmas as magical as your first`.

It’s a slightly hurried narrative that struggles to fit the two minutes allocated to it and its never clear how long the alien is there really. Events appear to take place over several days but I have a theory about that. The advert does at least capture the magic a child feels about Xmas and uses the tropes of a first crush rather delicately. It’s not without humour either as the girl tries to eat a mince pie still in its foil while her response to him throwing a snowball is to let loose a jet of air that knocks him over. The fact that the music doesn’t start for fifteen seconds and the speedy editing give it the tone of a clip from a movie rather than a standalone piece and both child actors do just enough to convince us.



The music is a slowed down and more elegiac reading of the old Phil Oakey/ Georgio Moroder song `Together in Electric Dreams` a suitably relevant choice given the tech on the alien spaceship. Its sung with a lightness of touch and key lines like “too late to stay” and “its hard to recognise” perfectly match moments we’re watching. The song was originally the almost title track of a film called Electric Dreams though may be more familiar from being featured in another advert a few years back sung somewhat more raucously by a pub band. Twenty -year old Lola Young is the singer here. She’s an up and coming BRIT school alumnus tipped by some to be the next sensation though this tends to be part of the hype when a new singer is being pushed. She has a lovely voice though and her breathy vocals add character.

The ad has been interpreted literally by many including myself initially but after I watched a second time I wondered if the encounter we see actually takes place at all? Whether this is all in the boy’s head as he visualises an ideal, magical Xmas? We see the things he supposedly takes to the woods in cutaway scenes set in the family home so is he just making this story up for himself? If it really did happen he’d surely get a ride in the girl’s spaceship? Of all the reactions I was amused by The Guardian’s theory that the alien will now use the DNA from the kiss to create a virus that will wipe out  the human race!

John Lewis themselves say that the point of the ad is watching these Xmas things through the eyes of the alien “reminds us of the magic of a first Christmas, and the moments that matter." In common with many of these ads you do wonder what relevance it actually has to John Lewis’ Xmas products? I suppose the tree, mince pies and so on are meant to signify that. However it is somewhat less magical to discover that while you can buy replicas of the jumper it doesn’t have the twinkly lights and you can’t buy a model of the spaceship at all!

 

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