Tesco acknowledges ‘volatility’ of the festive spirit in its Christmas spot
BBH London’s Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes explains how the agency built on the success of its debut Tesco Christmas campaign.
Grocery retailer Tesco and the creative agency BBH London have put together a Christmas campaign based on the insight that people have many ups and downs during the festive period and might need some help to feed their Christmas spirit.
It’s the second Tesco Christmas spot to come out of BBH London, which deputy executive creative director Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes says came with some second album pressure. Its 2023 ad followed a young boy who wasn’t feeling very Christmassy despite everyone around him turning into Christmas trees, reindeer and gingerbread, but ended with him finding his Christmas spirit and morphing into a glittering tree.
Tested by System1, the spot got a 5.7-star rating and landed on the research firm’s top 12 Christmas ads for that year.
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“We were all super chuffed with last year, both how it turned out creatively, but also how it landed with customers. So, we all knew in our gut that we wanted to find a way to build from it,” says Serradourada Guimaraes.
The 2024 campaign was born out of consumer data showing that Christmas spirit can be “volatile” and needs looking after. Throughout the festive period, people’s happiness can ebb and flow and the BBH team wanted to reflect that. This led to the creation of the campaign strapline ‘Helping feed your Christmas spirit.’
“If last year was helping you get your spirit, this year, we wanted to help you keep it and help you take care of it,” says Serradourada Guimaraes.
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Once landed on this idea, BBH wrote a ton of scripts before Serradourada Guimaraes and others in the team pulled from personal experience a story about grieving a grandparent at Christmas. “It is the time that you sit at the table and look around and miss people, so how do you make sure that they’re still there and continue all those traditions?”
The three-minute ad debuting today (November 12) follows Gary, who is grieving his grandmother but who has his spirits lifted by visiting his grandfather, who gives him a pack of Tesco gingerbread men. As his Christmas spirit is lifted, the world around him is transformed into gingerbread.
But the gingerbread world also cracks and crumbles when Gary is reminded of his grandmother. His spirits are then lifted and the gingerbread is repaired through festive drinks down the pub or spending time with family eating. The ad, produced by Iconoclast and Alaska and set to the soundtrack of On Melancholy Hill by Gorillaz, wraps with Gary and his grandad making a gingerbread house together – a pastime he and his grandma shared.
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The creative team was keen to portray “male fragility” in the storyline and casting of the ad. “We wanted to break some of the tropes,” Serradourada Guimaraes says. “He’s a builder, he’s a lad, but we also wanted to show that facade deals with emotions too.”
Cinematography, casting and location were all vital to making the story feel real and relatable, which the magical realism could be added on top of. These elements were also vital to convey Tesco’s tone of voice, says Serradourada Guimaraes.
“There is a tone to Tesco that feels real and raw but married with wit and entertainment,” he says. Despite the emotional weight of the three-minute hero spot, Serradourada Guimaraes wants it known that the whole campaign isn’t about grief. “It is about taking care of your spirit. Some of it might be as big as that, some of it might be as trivial as I missed the bus and I was feeling well, excited to be Christmasy and now I’m not so much.”
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‘Helping Feed Your Christmas Spirit’ is a broad platform for Tesco to activate around. It includes charity donations to food poverty groups FareShare and Trussell, free cinema tickets for families and a Father Christmas grotto.
The hero spot will air across cinema, digital and social platforms, with shorter cut-downs running on TV. There are also supporting out-of-home placements and print media across the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Central Europe. “It is a big platform and it is about helping people, no matter the circumstance, to try and bring their spirits up.”
Watch all the latest 2024 Christmas adverts.
Credits
Agency: BBH
Chief creative officer: Alex Grieve
Deputy executive creative director: Felipe Guimaraes
Creative director: Felipe Guimaraes
Senior creatives: Ieva Paulina, Camila Gurgel
Agency film producer: Rory Reames
Assistant film producers: Ted MacDonnell, Rebecca Ellis
Head of strategy: Saskia Jones
Strategy director: Hannah Slapper
Senior strategists: Alexi Hall, Bethan Wotton
Managing partner: James Rice
Business lead: Andrew Connolly
Senior account director: Celia Taylor
Account manager: Imogen Brooks
Senior project manager: Sophie Sanderson