Deck the screens with boughs of holly - it's that time of the year again, when retailers battle it out for the best Christmas advert of the season. We partnered with audience platform Lucid to test the emotional reactions of over 4,500 people in the UK, collecting over 19,000 ad views to 65 of this year's Christmas adverts.
John Lewis was back on form this year, coming top of our rankings with #BusterTheBoxer. Interestingly however, the overall trend appears to show a move away from the kind of emotional advertising we've seen in previous years, with less deliberate tugging on your heartstrings and rather more humour dominating the charts.
Here's the Full Christmas ad rankings
| Position | Brand | Campaign | Rank (%) |
Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | John Lewis | #BusterTheBoxer | 94.8 | 9 |
| 2nd | The Body Shop | #JungleBells | 94.1 | 9 |
| 3rd | Robert Dyas | Buster? ...Not on my trampoline! | 92.0 | 9 |
| 4th | Temptations | Keep them busy | 91.8 | 9 |
| 5th | M&S | Christmas with Love from Mrs Claus | 89.4 | 9 |
| 6th | Febreze | The 12 Stinks of Christmas | 89.2 | 9 |
| 7th | Currys PC World | Unsubtle Hints - Christmas Lights | 85.8 | 8 |
| 8th | Waitrose | #HomeForChristmas | 84.9 | 8 |
| 9th | Amazon Prime | Imam & Priest | 83.8 | 8 |
| 10th | Heathrow Airport | Coming Home for Christmas | 83.6 | 8 |
| 11th | Apple | Frankie's Holiday | 83.1 | 8 |
| 12th | McDonald's | The Doll | 82.3 | 8 |
| 13th | Tesco | Bore | 76.1 | 7 |
| 14th | Intu | Christmas Ad 2016 | 75.5 | 7 |
| =15th | TK Maxx | The Sing-Song | 75.0 | 7 |
| =15th | Pandora | The Joy of Creating, The Joy of Giving | 75.0 | 7 |
| 17th | Tesco Ireland | Dear Ma, Love Aoife #ToTheHosts | 70.8 | 7 |
| 18th | Argos | Gifts That Even Yetis Will Love (JL Spoof) | 68.9 | 7 |
| 19th | Asda | The Big Dilemma | 68.6 | 7 |
| =20th | Sainsbury's | The Greatest Gift | 67.0 | 7 |
| =20th | Currys PC World | Unsubtle Hints - Nativity | 67.0 | 7 |
| 22nd | Superdrug | Get That #SuperdrugFeeling | 66.5 | 7 |
| =23rd | Very | Get More Out of Giving | 65.2 | 7 |
| =23rd | Lidl | #LidlChristmasMoments | 65.2 | 7 |
| =25th | Bell's | #WhatTheBells | 64.2 | 6 |
| =25th | Three | The Girl and the Cloud | 64.2 | 6 |
| 27th | Vodafone UK | Christmas 2016 | 62.1 | 6 |
| 28th | Bettys | Christmas Is More Magical with Bettys | 61.1 | 6 |
| 29th | Aldi | Kevin the Carrot | 59.8 | 6 |
| 30th | Coca-Cola | A Coke for Christmas | 57.3 | 6 |
| =31st | Harrods | A Very British Bear Tale | 55.6 | 6 |
| =31st | eBay | Survive the Disco | 55.6 | 6 |
| 33rd | Barbour | The Snowman and the Snowdog | 54.7 | 6 |
| 34th | Lidl | Christmas Turkey #LidlSurprises | 94.1 | 9 |
| 35th | DFS | #SofaExperts | 53.7 | 6 |
| 36th | Moonpig | Head of Cards #MoonpigChristmas | 53.1 | 6 |
| 37th | Tesco | Bring It On | 51.7 | 6 |
| 38th | Littlewoods | Own It | 51.3 | 6 |
| 39th | Subway | Keep Discovering! | 50.1 | 6 |
| 40th | Tesco Ireland | Here's To The Hosts This Christmas | 49.8 | 5 |
| 41st | Harvey Nichols | Britalia | 49.4 | 5 |
| 42nd | WWF | #IProtectTigers | 49.0 | 5 |
| =43rd | Not On The High Street | Magic Is Real | 48.4 | 5 |
| =43rd | Stella Artois | The Delivery | 48.4 | 5 |
| =45th | Argos | Christmas Yetis | 48.1 | 5 |
| =45th | Debenhams | #FoundIt for a Fabulous Christmas | 48.1 | 5 |
| =47th | Coca-Cola | Holidays Are Coming 2016 | 47.7 | 5 |
| =47th | Mulberry | It's What's Inside That Counts | 47.7 | 5 |
| =49th | Aldi | Kevin the Carrot's Adventure Continues | 46.5 | 5 |
| =49th | Aldi | Christmas Meal Inspiration | 46.5 | 5 |
| 51st | Boots | The Gift of Beauty | 43.6 | 5 |
| 52nd | Asda | The Never-Ending Table | 41.1 | 5 |
| 53rd | Cadbury | UK Christmas Ad 2016 | 40.0 | 5 |
| 54th | Sainsbury's | Food Christmas Advert 2016 | 39.7 | 5 |
| 55th | Morrisons | Christmas 2016 - Morrisons Makes It | 39.4 | 5 |
| 56th | Alzheimer's Research UK | Santa Forgot | 36.9 | 5 |
| 57th | Burberry | The Tale of Thomas Burberry | 36.3 | 5 |
| 58th | B&M | Christmas Advert 2016 | 32.2 | 4 |
| =59th | Clarins | Christmas with Clarins | 28.0 | 4 |
| =59th | M&S | 'Tis the season to be naughty | 28.0 | 4 |
| 61st | Toys R US | It's a Magical Place! | 25.6 | 4 |
| 62nd | Swarovski | Swarovski and Karlie Kloss Celebrate the Holidays | 23.0 | 4 |
| 63rd | JD | #UndisputedChristmas | 21.6 | 3 |
| 64th | House of Fraser | Christmas Is Coming for You feat. Laura Mvula | 15.4 | 3 |
| 65th | Grey Goose | Lumiere | 15.4 | 3 |
These rankings are based on individual adverts’ EmotionAll scores – a 1 to 10 performance score which compares videos’ emotional performance across our entire database of over 7000+ previously-tested campaigns. This EmotionAll® score can be segmented by age or gender as well.
Emotions drive behaviour and our platform enables marketers to get insights into the emotional performance of their content, informing their creative testing and media planning processes to maximise the impact of their video advertising.
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