Gravy boats, giant carrots and bauble smashing fun: unwrapping the best Christmas ads of 2024

Professor Gayle Kerr, QUT School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations

Once Christmas advertising was a means of wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and hoping they would spend up big. The 30-second TV ads of old featured Santa as the mastermind of our favourite day of the year.

These days we no longer have to wait for Santa. We have the power to search for our favourite Christmas ads on platforms such as YouTube where large companies’ Christmas ads are eagerly anticipated.

They have become a genre in their own right where people can comment and critique, share, replay, rank by year, make GOAT lists, meme, spoof and edit to their hearts’ content, extending the reach of the advertisement and attention far beyond anything TV could ever do.

Companies invest heavily in these Christmas masterpieces and are repaid in the advertising world’s most coveted currency – earned media – great ads that evoke the Christmas spirit and stir our yuletide emotions virtually assure their going viral and outstripping, in terms of audience attention, far beyond the cost of the ad’s production.

The Christmas season is the one most prized by advertisers and their ad agencies, such as international giants Saatchi and Saatchi and McCann, who take the opportunity to show off their expertise and vie each year for originality and fabulously creative and whimsical production values to stimulate the vital viral conversation.

For consumers, sharing our favourite ad can help us extend Christmas wishes to friends, family and followers, without having to post a single Christmas card.

Another big change is that Santa seems absent from much of this year’s Christmas advertising. Instead, we are taking Christmas into our own hands and becoming our own best version of Santa. Doing what we think is right for ourselves and our family and using humour to keep that ho, ho, ho alive!

In the UK Boots Christmas ad “#MakeMagic”, Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh organizes a team of helpers and asks, “You thought it was all about him?” as she motions to Santa, who is snoozing while everyone else makes Christmas happen. Likewise with Australia’s Aldi ad, which urges people to “Go a little extra this Christmas” by turning a life-size gravy boat into a means of delivering the family turkey by sea.

Even the UK department store John Lewis, the advertiser whose ads have helped define the genre, tells us, “The secret to finding the perfect gift is knowing where to look”. In this year’s offering ,“The gifting hour”,  a woman searches through time and family memories, and the John Lewis store to find the perfect gift for her sister. She embodies family ties and traditions and the wish to make others happy, with no jolly old man in a red suit in sight.

In Australia, where we don’t have snow, robins and holly, Woolworths empowers a country community to come together to build their own Christmas decoration, a huge carrot on a hillside that lights up the land and outdoor community Christmas dinner. Red Rooster tells people, "The Chickmas Burger isn’t just a meal; it’s a seasonal permission to take Christmas into your own hands" and do Christmas your way without the fuss.

And even though it is we who put on the red suit and beard this year, some of the fundamentals of Christmas advertising are still evident.