Christmas choices

For any retailer, Christmas trade can make or break the year.

So in the lead up to Christmas some critical choices need to be made as to how to position the brand favourably ahead of competitors in an effort to snag more market share.

Christmas choices can be the difference between staff bonuses all round, or a New Year welcomed in with the possibility of retrenchments. That's right...nobody ever said retail was fun.

So let's then see what choices some notable retailers have made.

First up, South African mega-supermarket brand Checkers teamed up with legendary local YouTuber Dan Mace for this...

Yes - it's fresh, entertaining, cleverly shows the available product range without coming across as being too pushy and it's in-line with the brand's tongue-in-cheek quirky personality.

Other South African supermarket brands appear to have made the choice to do nothing (as yet). Ignoring Christmas is also a choice that can be made, but probably not a very good one.

Waitrose

British retailers traditionally know the value of going all-in on Christmas, and so far the stand out appears to be the new Waitrose ad featuring some stars from that old movie hit Love Actually.

So Love Actually (the movie) is now more than 20 years old. As lovely as the ad appears to be, the choice of casting Keira Knightly and this other guy - for me at least - dates the brand somewhat and makes me think that besides 'going back in time' the brand appears to be out of ideas as to what the future may hold.

Call me biased as a futurist, but when your best ideas are historical - the alarm bells should be clanging loudly in somebody's ear. This is a questionable choice.

John Lewis

Traditionally John Lewis always comes up with an outstanding Christmas ad that really kicks off the season in the UK.

Their choice for this year's ad is terrible. What on earth is happening here is anyone's guess. Production is poor, story line is weak, the overall concept is unbelievably undercooked. It's certainly not up to their usual standard. Let's hope nobody was holding their breath for this one to debut.

Amazon

Amazon has a few Christmas related ad options cued up for deployment, but the primary set of assets feature Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch reading out real product reviews accompanied by the dulcet tones of some light keyboard tunes.

The choice of hiring Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch is a wise one. Nuff said.

Christmas ad choices are critical. Some make better ones than others, but that's why the people in charge of choosing...tend to earn the big bucks.