Christmassy Campaign Review: ‘Doesn’t deliver enough character or story interest to draw us in’ – QIC, Westfield, Myer

This is part of Mumbrella’s 2024 Christmas campaign coverage. Click here to see other articles in the series. 

In Campaign Review, Mumbrella invites industry creatives and strategists to offer their views on recent ad campaigns.

Elle Bullen, executive creative director at Bullfrog, gave it a 5/10 and said:

The best and worst thing about Christmas is that it rolls around every year. Brilliant if you’re seven, but tricky if you’re a brand trying to stand out amongst all those jingling bells and manufactured feels. Creating something genuinely fresh and attention worthy can be as challenging as trying to think of yet another elf on the shelf antic when you’re 22 days deep.

The UK proves time and again that advertising in this moment can be a thing of wonder, but it’s very easy to fall into tired traditions. At this time of year, best intentions aren’t enough. It’s not just the thought that counts, it’s the storytelling, the craft and the cut through that make the magic.

The tone and ambition of this work for QIC is nice, but the result doesn’t push much past that. Nice.

In terms of going all in on Christmas, it’s hard to compete with Aldi. And while there’s some fun moments in this film, it can’t help but feel a bit familiar and at times a little forced. Some characters feel convincingly Christmas mad, others less so which leaves viewers feeling a tad awkward.

Despite the VO’s best efforts, this seems to be selling Christmas more than QIC.

Dane Smith, behavioural science lead at Ogilvy, gave it a 5/10 and said:

Sometimes, Christmas advertising does a much better job of ‘advertising Christmas’, than distinguishing a brand or directly influencing purchasing behaviour.

In this case, QIC – a major player in bricks-and-mortar retail (albeit one I needed to Google first) – seems to make a beeline straight for spreading festive joy, which it does well enough. How that joy is related back to its brand, or any one of its two dozen community shopping centres, is less clear.

The insight used in this campaign is simple, but emotionally rich: humans love to reciprocate acts of kindness, and in many cases, derive more joy from returning favours than receiving them. While using this insight to spread a pleasant Christmas feeling, I wish the brand had also taken the opportunity to make QIC an unmissable hero in its own story, and a home for all those warm, gooey associations.

As a retail outlet, why just celebrate ‘joy bringers’ from the sidelines, when you could be inspiring people to spoil them rotten? As a relatively unknown brand, why champion Elf Gary and not heartwarming tales of your own awesomeness – like QIC’s annual toy drives and Santa visits to maternity wards? And as a David to Westfield’s Goliath, why not own the fact that you’re a people-powered, community-centre alternative to the heartless mega-mall? Cue: Gary the Bathurst City Centre butcher, busting his chops to make your holiday BBQ that little bit more memorable. Cheers, Gary!

Brand: Westfield

Campaign: ‘Feels Like Christmas’

Agency: AKQA

The verdict: Looks nice but misses the magic. Bonus points for multisensory marketing.

Elle gave it a 6/10 and said:

Visually beautiful, but Westfield doesn’t deliver quite enough character or story interest to really draw us in.

Scissors is a lovely insight, but the reindeer ornament feels like a missed opportunity to tell the tale of a truly beloved, undeniably heinous object. It’s that bit too polished, and when you compare to the authenticity of AAMIs lovely day after Christmas ad, it just doesn’t hit in the same way.

The fact that both Westfield and QIC have resorted to familiar language with ‘Here’s to’ sums up the familiarity that holds both campaigns back from being distinctive and achieving truly special status.

Bonus points for the lovely end frames.

Dane gave it a 7/10 and said:

It’s nice to see multisensory marketing being exported out of the QSR industry, in which it’s dumbly dismissed as ‘food porn’.

The exaggerated crinkling of wrapping paper, the steam rising from Nona’s ‘scolding hot raisins’ – these things aren’t just fun to watch, hear and smell; they’re extremely well-suited to shaking loose old memories and purse strings.

The brain’s olfactory bulb, which is involved in our sense of smell, is directly connected to other areas in the brain associated with autobiographical memory and emotion. In Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’, a bite of Madeline cake dipped in tea wasn’t just a tasty nosh for the odd Frenchman, it was the key to unlocking his earliest, richest childhood memories.

Likewise, Westfield is able to evoke the most intimate details of Christmas past with only bite-sized, sensuous snippets – and a fraction of the budget required to run one of John Lewis’ beautiful, but expensively long-winded parables.

My only one wish: bring back the comically large Westfield gift tags which brandished products in the campaigns of yesteryear – they do some heavy lifting for attribution.

Brand: Myer

Campaign: ‘Share the Joy’

Agency: Clemenger BBDO

The verdict: Memorable and joyful, as Christmas should be.

Elle gave it a 7.5/10 and said:

My pick of this bunch, Myer takes a step out away from what you’d expect a department store to serve up for Christmas, and in doing so earns a deserved chunk of our ever-dwindling attention spans.

They know their audience, and that Australians like to blur the line between naughty and nice, and Humbug is a lovely way to bring this tension to life.

It’s fun, it’s different, and clearly stretches beyond the screen with the character being available to purchase – a clever build.

If I’m being picky, I’d perhaps like to have seen some more variation in the types of mischief little mate gets up to and the character craft upped, but all in all this is a great demonstration of My store being everyone’s store – even an agro pink critter.

Dane gave it an 8/10 and said:

Whoever said ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too’ clearly never worked in advertising. In the late 1950s, Elvis Presley’s manager/marketing guru/notorious sleazebag Tom Parker sold ‘I Hate Elvis’ badges to church regulars and the rock ‘n’ roll impaired. Genius.

Flash forward to 2024, and Myer is essentially signalling the same thing to their customer base (albeit in a much cuter, more Pixar way): you may not love Christmas and all its tinselly trimmings, but why should that stop you from getting in on the fun?

While only 43% of Australians identify as Christians, 91% say they’re planning on buying some kind of Christmas gift or related product this year (Monash University, 2024).

With the unpredictable rise of Friendmas, and other, non-traditional takes on holiday cheer, it’s very clever of Myer to stop gatekeeping the merry-making, and to start making it extra permissible across ages, denominations, Doc Marten sizes, and budget-ranges.

Bonus points for the charming purple people eater.

Got a tip?

Lauren McNamara

Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.

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topics Bullfrog Campaign Review Christmas Christmas224 Dane Smith Elle Bullen Myer Ogilvy QIC Westfield

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