Hot Santa and cartoon carrots: Have we reached peak supermarket Christmas ad?

LAST UPDATE | 2 hrs ago

Patrick Hanlon

SOME PEOPLE HAVE their Christmas trees up already. But even before those sprang up the supermarkets beat them to it.

The battle of the supermarket Christmas TV advertising campaigns has once again begun, and we are all blessed with water cooler fodder for the next six weeks. I don’t mean arguing over “which one is best?” I mean the more important debate of “do they even matter any more?”

Which will pull at your heart — and purse strings, so says Big Supermarket — more? A cartoon carrot looking for his lost cauli-dog? A humanised Elf on the Shelf moonlighting as a supermarket worker?

A talking toy dog taking granny ‘round the shops in a magical Tuk Tuk? Or James Norton as hot Santa, all shirtless and clean-shaven, with Amandaland star Lucy Punch as his Mrs Claus?

Glory be to the advertising agencies, high on their own supply, whose job it is to come up with this stuff. In a land not so far, far away, there’s a creative director giving themselves a big pat on the back for bringing to life another soppy cinematic masterpiece that’s a far cry from reality, set to a melancholic piano cover.

Have we reached peak Christmas ad?

The thing is: do these ads actually influence any of us to buy anything? There’s no doubt they can be memorable, clever and heart-warming, but do they have the power to lure your loyalty from one chain to another? Do they actually pay off commercially, or are these commercials just a vanity project in the creative industry’s great arms race to be the most viral?

The thing I grapple with is the fact supermarkets spend millions selling you the whimsical festive fantasy, all furry overcoats, A-list smiles and perfect blow-drys with product shelves fit to burst and a golden, glistening turkey on every table. Why edit out the reality? The actual in-store experience is an annual hellscape.

Supermarket Christmas ads would have you believe the big shop is fun, but mostly it's just a brightly lit hellscape.

Before you even get through the door there’s the battle to secure the closest parking spot and find the one trolley without a wonky, click-y wheel or a sticky handle.

Doing the Big Shop™️ in supermarkets for Christmas is typified by loud arguments with your partner in the aisles, brawling like wild animals to get your paws on packs of party food picky bits, and 15 trolley-long queues while you sweat in your padded winter coat with the shop’s heating set to a tropical 25ºC.

It’s all flustered Mams and lost Dads, children running blindly into product displays and scribbled lists in your most impressively indecipherable handwriting yet. It’s decimated shelves and most of your essentials out of stock, meaning the single store visit turns into a grand tour of the big five — because inevitably it will be the last one you visit where the tin of condensed milk, a bunch of tarragon or the extra-large turkey tray will finally be found.

These seasonal campaigns sell themselves on abundance whereas the reality is more scarcity, price wars, loyalty card discounts and the pressure and stress of trying to feed the family at Christmas.

Supermarkets want to paint themselves as the ones making Christmas magical, but that doesn’t translate to real life when you’re fighting for your life in the aisles for the last bag of breadcrumbs or brandy butter.

Who played it best?

For my money, Tesco is probably the winner of the Christmas adverts this year, with its Ireland-specific campaign called ‘Helping Christmas Feel Magic’, which follows a young boy convinced a Tesco worker is an undercover elf.

The best part is the illustrated fictional book, Wild Elves of Ireland, created by Irish illustrator Kitty Moss which features throughout. The whole thing is less about the postcard perfect Christmas and more about the wonder of childhood imagination. It’s simple and effective without veering into the sickly sweet.

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Then, take ALDI, a brand that has cleverly woven a cohesive annual storyline with its animated vegetable universe. There’s a certain irony in carting out Kevin The Carrot for his tenth annual adventure given that Irish carrot growers are having a less than magical time, warning that the economics are no longer making sense.

The cost of producing carrots in Ireland has doubled since 2020 yet the retail price has only increased by 40% over that period. With just nine commercial carrot growers left in the entire country after a recent loss of a major producer who accounted for 12% of the annual output, the gap between production costs and returns is putting serious pressure on farmers. The nine-member growers’ group represents more than 95% of Ireland’s retail carrot supply, and argues that Irish carrots are being sold below sustainable levels.

It’s all very well making the carrot the star of a supermarket Christmas campaign, but what if ALDI had made the carrot growers the star of this year? Shining a light on farmers trying to make a living from producing the carrots we probably all take for granted.

The best Christmas supermarket advertisements may well be the ones with the celebrity stars, the cinematic polish and the moving storytelling, all costing eye-watering amounts to produce.

But maybe we need to root these more in reality rather than fantasy. The adverts which resonate most are the ones we can relate to, that don’t add filler or filter out the messiness.

The ones that keep Christmas simple and achievable rather than ramping up the pressure by packaging Christmas with the prettiest, most perfect bow, because Christmas is imperfect, it always will be, and that’s worth celebrating.

Patrick Hanlon is an Irish food, travel and culture journalist, and is one half of the award-winning duo GastroGays. He is the author of a new food column, The Feeder’s Digest at TheJournal.ie. More on Instagram.