Christmas ads help contribute to the festive fun every year and this year is no different, writes Sarah Walsh, head of strategy with The Public House, who examines the latest findings of The Interesting Index.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year for advertisers – the time when we are least hated by the general public.
That’s right: at Christmas there are more searches for adverts on YouTube than Mariah Carey or Michael Bublé. No better time for the Interesting Index to appear for 2024’s final goo at what’s getting people’s pulses racing.
The Interesting Index, a collaboration between The Public House, Bounce Insights and Adworld.ie sets out to understand what ads people remember and why and there’s no better time for this than Christmas.
The general trend in favour of adverts (as pointed out by YouTube) was confirmed by our own data which had most people (43%) describing the advertising they’d seen recently as good, a +13% uplift on our last wave.
Getting into the top 10 most remembered ads from the past 3 months, there were a number of close contenders for the top 10, with a triple-way tie for 10th spot! This demonstrates how many more ads people tend to remember at this time of the year versus the beginning of the year when we struggled to even create a list of 10.
So, this is what the The Interesting Index Top 10 looks like for Christmas 2024.
- Aldi Get into the Christmas Spirit with Kevin The Carrot
- Coca Cola The Holiday Magic is Coming (AI-generated)
- Guinness Christmas ad
- Marks & Spencer Christmas Clothing and Food
- John Lewis The Gifting Hour
- An Post Send from The Heart this Christmas
- Tesco Helping Feed Your Christmas Spirit
- Dunnes Stores Make Christmas for Everyone
- Lidl Magical Christmas
- Cadbury Secret Santa, Boots Make Magic and Vodafone Connections You Can Always Rely On
For the second year in a row, Aldi has come out on top, proving the strength of distinctive assets and consistent storytelling with Kevin the carrot. It’s no wonder it was also System 1’s number 1 Christmas ad too.
“The ad was for Aldi, it was about Kevin the carrot on another Christmas adventure and it stood out to me because of Kevin the Carrot, when i see him i know it’s an Aldi ad.”
Coca Cola’s controversial AI-generated remake of their classic ‘Holidays Are Coming’ ad also elicited strong reactions – and not all good. While some didn’t even notice the difference and still got that ‘must be Christmas’ feeling from it, others felt the AI approach ruined the magic of a once iconic ad. Either way, it was the second most remembered ad.
“That really bad Coca Cola ad with the AI, freaked me out with all the smiling soulless eyes”
“Coca Cola’s new Xmas ad – the controversial remake of the classic ‘holidays are coming’ ad where they replaced everything with ghastly AI images.”
In the latest Interesting Index, there was also a lot of love for UK retail brands like Marks & Spencer and John Lewis, who have built a reputation for big budget Christmas campaigns over the years.
With celebrity cameos from Dawn French and strong emotive storytelling in both, it’s no wonder they stuck in people’s minds.
“The John Lewis Christmas ad is so beautiful. Especially when the woman walks into the other world through the clothes store. It’s so magical and captivating and brings you into another world.”
That’s not to say that every brand needs to fork out for a new Christmas campaign every year. There were a number of campaigns in the Top 10 that were reruns – including Guinness’ iconic Christmas ad, “The Home of Guinness”, and some more recent festive campaigns from the likes of Cadbury, Dunnes Stores, Vodafone and An Post.
“The Guinness ad……the older it gets, the better it gets.”
“The Cadbury secret Santa ad. The ad is for everyone in Ireland who would like to surprise a loved one with a bar of chocolate. I remember this ad because I think it is a nice idea and every year I look out for the QR codes but I never see any.”
All of the major grocery retailers made it into the Top 10 except for SuperValu which narrowly missed out by just a hair this year.
“The Tesco Christmas ad with a grandad and grandson and gingerbread houses that they made with the grandmother who had since passed..I remember it because it reminded me of things I did with my grandparents at Christmas.”
So that’s where we finished up the year – yet again, with a swathe of adverts that appeal to the general public’s emotions… with the result being a general public that somehow, completely against trend, really enjoys advertising.
Who knew?
Maybe 2025 will be the year which we take that learning and carry it into the rest of the year. Because if the data we’ve seen again and again is telling us anything, it’s that emotional ads are not just for Christmas.
