Third time does more harm than charm for ‘Merry Pringles’ says 23red managing partner and creative director Sean Kinmont, adVENT Day: 3

Behind the windows of this very special Drum adVENT Calendar you’ll find a different member of the creative industry venting their feelings on a Christmas ad, or ads, they love or loathe. Today it's 23red managing partner and creative director, Sean Kinmont.

I am completely at a loss as to why Pringles is running its deeply uninspiring Christmas advert for the third year in a row. After two years of the insipid commercial lurking around in ad breaks, on its third airing it is regrettably just as charmless as it’s ever been.Recycling may already be a theme for Pringles - the brand has fan pages all over the World Wide Web full of weird and wonderful ways to reuse a Pringles tube. But recycling a Christmas advert - let alone a poor one - is like sending your family and friends the same Christmas card every year, with the ‘and a Happy 2007’ bit scratched out in cheap biro.And who would do that?The lacklustre commercial, with its semi-magical realist slant, is about as un-magical as they come. And the icing on the Christmas cake - the very worst bit of all - is that the advert ends with the horrible line ‘Merry Pringles’. That doesn’t even make sense! How can you have a Merry Pringle? Have Pringles been re-hashed into an annual holiday? Are they now a religious festival we didn’t know about?The whole advert screams of square holes and round Pringles tubes, and leaves me wanting to reach for the nearest Pringles-tube-come-flower-pot and hurl it somewhere far away.Pringles is a brilliant brand and this Christmas advert doesn’t do it justice. Let’s hope for something more exciting from them next festive season.Sean Kinmont is managing partner and creative director at 23red; he started his career at Tequila in 1990. In 1992 Sean was appointed as creative director at Tequila before becoming executive creative director of Tequila Worldwide. Sean helped set up 23red in October 2000, and has worked on campaigns for the likes of Bacardi Ltd, Playstation and Ladbrokes.Yesterday (December 2) LIDA's creative director Nicky Bullard sounded off on Iceland's 'Pure Imagination' Christmas ad