The festive season is almost upon us – which means it’s time for advertisers to up their budgets and start producing shiny snow-covered campaigns again. This Christmas Marc Lewis, the highly-revered creative mind who leads the School of Communications Arts London, will review (in his opinion) the merits of some of the biggest brands' seasonal spots with a creative eye, separating the Christmas crackers from the turkeys.
Well, this must be an example of art imitating life, because the Amazon 'Holidays' commercial from Lucky Generals comes heavy on air-filled packaging and not enough inside the box.
The big idea, if there is one, is that the smiling-face shape of the Amazon logo becomes a smiling face, which sings The Jackson’s Can You Feel It? while we cut from scene to scene of generic, standard clips from every middle-of-the-road Christmas commercial you have ever endured.
We get to see workers dancing in a fulfillment centre, a bit like the old Quick Fit ads. We get to see a sick boy in a hospital bed look up and smile at his Amazon box, in a scene almost certainly added because research told Amaazon it would make Mrs Jones at Acacia Avenue cry. We get to see two star-crossed lovers (one black, one white – obviously) clock each other carrying Amazon parcels and smile their best come-to-bed smile. We get to see workers on a building site behaving.
To be fair, my seven-year-old loved this commercial. My three-year-old likes anything. Neither of them has a credit card, though.
I reckon that my wife would like it too, but she cries during the reality show First Dates.
This commercial smacks of a lazy strategy, with generic mediocrity running through every frame. Two of my alumni made a set of brilliant commercials recently for Amazon Prime, which couldn’t be further from this Christmas commercial.
Lucky Generals? Yes, I suppose you must be.
Score out of 5?
3
Keep up with The Drum's 2018 Christmas coverage here.