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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