đ Christmas ads: why crying is less profitable than clicks, plus all the latest brand news
Issue #77
Lots of new subscribers this week. Welcome âď¸. This is a capsule edition to regulate the service back to a Friday. As youâre new, you might also like other exhales covering Nike, Ben & Jerryâs, Cluely, Lululemon, Heinz, Duolingo, OpenAI, and many more.
Weekly Exhale
Hooray. The Christmas ads are here. Again.
Like tinsel from the loft, the tear-jerkers, childhood mascots, and carrots have all made their return. This year, the creative silly season has kicked off early. Ten days early, in fact. Extra festive cheer, maybe.
Or a hint of nervousness?
A quick look at this yearâs crop tells you something straight away: fewer one-offs, more sequels. More compounding. More recycling last yearâs characters, storylines, even music. Chasing that Coca-Cola truck effect. An idea sticky enough to return each December with just a tweak. The kind of brand asset you can eventually hand over to AI and stop worrying about shoot days and production costs.
In this respect, John Lewis is an outlier. But also, the anchor.
As the pioneers of the Christmas as a creative event, they still start from scratch. Each year chasing more magic than the last. Some years hit. Some miss. We all pick our own favourites. Whether its good or bad almost doesnât matter anymore. Itâs the John Lewis ad.
And yet this year, Iâm struggling.
As a sponsored tradition, itâs another well crafted, well meaning effort.
Yet somehow, oddly adrift.
Maybe if the script didnât try quite so hard. The direction so on-the-nose, caught somewhere between Weekender, Stephen Graham and Ted Lasso. Taking the defiance of counterculture, lacing it with the most intimate moments of fatherhood, gesturing vaguely at masculinity and packaging it all up to sell air fryers.
Maybe itâs just that the ad holds up a mirror to Generation X and what I see feels a little too close to home.
Or, maybe I just canât ignore the gap between the self-importance on screen and the reality of a business thatâs closed half its stores. These spots are beautiful, expensive, and increasingly irrelevant to how people actually shop.
The Christmas ad bet is simple:
If you can make someone cry with a story about a dad and his son, maybe theyâll remember that feeling when theyâre deciding where to shop.
Maybe they will.
Or maybe they open their phone. And Amazon will suggest exactly what they need, at a price thatâs hard to beat, with delivery later that day.
In the same week the Christmas ads dropped, new data confirmed the same old story. Advertising spend is up 8%, but there are only three winners: Meta, Google, and Amazon. Together, they now take 56% of all ad spend.
That share has doubled in the same period that Christmas ads became a national tradition.
Amazon alone will generate $12 billion in ad revenue this quarter, up 19% year on year. Thatâs more than the entire UK television ad market. More than John Lewis turns over in a year. All made in three months, just from selling ads.
So the real competition isnât which retailer âwinsâ Christmas. Itâs between an industry still clinging to the power of story and a group of unregulated tech giants who now own the checkout, and advertisingâs latest power: AI.
A world, frankly, where crying is less profitable than clicking.
I do feel for legacy retailers. Theyâre in a bindâbut itâs one of their own making.
Theyâve watched their business models erode for years. But they canât not make a Christmas ad. The ads still get billions of views on YouTube. They trend on X. They get written up in all the tabloids.
In which case, I guess youâve got to be in the brand-building game. Not the Christmas ad wars.
For John Lewis, itâs become a ritual that feels more about proving how important advertising thinks it is, rather than why John Lewis actually matters. For all the scale and sentiment, it still hasnât quite found its voice. Just a string of emotional tugs, caught somewhere between middle-class confusion and an ad industry clinging to the memory of its better years.
In the meantime, Iâll take the carrots. And the choirs. The perfume ads with all the velvet mist and none of the story.
It really is like pulling the same old decorations down from the loft. Iâm never wild about Christmas at first. But I get there.
Soon enough, Iâm humming holidays are coming, half-smiling as the number of wheels on the AI Coca-Cola truck mysteriously changes from scene to scene.
Maybe then Iâll jump in the car. Head to the supermarket. Wheel a trolley around like I used to. See if my giant baby boy wants to ride shotgun.
Throw our phones in the glovebox.
Play one or two of those old Christmas tunes on the way.
Letâs rise together with every issue. âĄ
Market Moves
Bank of England signals December rate cut | The Guardian
The US economy is K-shaped, not pear-shaped | Forbes
Economist counts down to Americaâs looming debt doomsday | Quartz
Brand Beat
Retailâs best Christmas 2025 ads| Marketing Beat
Why women sob at the new John Lewis ad | Stylist
AI boosts tech giantsâ ad market dominance | Wall Street Journal
Amazon launches a standalone low-price shopping app | TechCrunch
ITV in talks to sell television business to SKY | BBC
Starbucks animated holiday ads reclaim cozy coffeehouse vibe | Marketing Dive
Heinz taps FMCG veteran to drive taste improvement | Marketing Beat
Shopify becomes largest company to launch Substack newsletter | Modern Retail
Netflix unveils first five minutes of Stranger Things season 5 | Mashable
Why Coca-Colaâs AI chief greenlit another AI holiday ad | Adweek
Gap taps viral momentum with multigenerational holiday choir | Adweek
The hidden cost of shopping at Shein | Business of Fashion
Sonos hires veteran to revive its bruised brand | The Wall Street Journal
Luxury tile retailer collapses amid high street crisis | The Telegraph
Spotify expects higher profits from price hikes and user growth | Reuters
Starbucks sells 60% China stake to Boyu for $4 billion | Financial Post
Marks & Spencer sees profits fall sharply after cyberattack | The Wall Street Journal
Stagwell surges 85% as CEO eyes âPalantir-pactâ | Bloomberg
BrewDog pokes fun at itself in new OOH campaign | The Grocer
Eating in: the eat-at-home economy is booming | Financial Times
TikTok shop now rivals eBay in online marketplace scale | Wired
Starting Up
Solo female founder lands UKâs largest pre-seed to fix fashion fit | Tech Funding News
Meet the wealthiest guest judge on Dragonsâ Den | Startups
Synthesia secures $200m funding at $4bn valuation | Silicon Republic
Why hackathons are so back | Sifted
Tech Tidbits
Why small brands are falling in love with AI | Business of Fashion
Elon Musk secures a trillion-dollar pay package | Mashable
Tim Berners-Lee warns AI could cripple the webâs ad model | Financial Times
Kim Kardashian says ChatGPT is her frenemy | TechCrunch
Open AI probably canât make ends meet, thatâs where you come in | Marcus on AI
Venture Vibes
OpenAI seeks US government support for $1 trillion expansion | The Telegraph
Sequoiaâs shake up may be a turning point | Financial Times
Corporate venture capital and the 16% problem | Forbes
Design Driven
Apple, bring back the iBookâstop being cowards | The Verge
Mamdaniâs bold plan to redesign New Yorkâs streets | Fast Company
The decadeâs top 10 magazine designs | Itâs Nice That
Happiness
Why this common parenting tip is completely pointless | The Atlantic
Gen X radicalised by online bile amid midlife rage | The Guardian
Will Musk work harder for a trillion dollars than a billion? | New York Times
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