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John Lewis Christmas Advertising

Artist behind John Lewis Christmas ad soundtrack vows to donate all royalties to charity as a result of #StopFundingHate campaign

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By Jessica Goodfellow, Media Reporter

November 26, 2016 | 4 min read

The musicians behind this year’s John Lewis Christmas campaign, Vaults, have vowed to donate any funds they receive as royalties from the advert as well as money raised from a Christmas gig to the charity Help Refugees as part of their support for the #StopFundingHate campaign.

John Lewis' Buster the Boxer ad

John Lewis' Buster the Boxer ad

In a letter addressed to their Twitter followers, the band wrote that “John Lewis is a great company” that has “good ethics, treated their staff well and raised money for good causes”.

However, referencing the Stop Funding Hate campaign - which has directly targeted John Lewis to pull advertising from the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and The Sun - the band wrote that it was “appalled” by the portrayal of some of the world’s most desperate people in areas of the press.

Lead singer Blythe Pepino has actively campaigned to support refugees, the letter read, who require, and still require, “empathy and support from a country that can clearly provide it”.

“Yet, they have been met with little to no assistance, bolstered by press coverage of ‘unique’ ‘hostility’ as noted by the UNHCR. There has been little to no change in the level of false reporting and xenophobia since the UN Human Rights Chief called for curbs on ‘hate speech’ in UK tabloids back in 2015," the letter read.

"So the idea behind Stop Funding Hate to use the power of consumers to influence big companies to redirect advertising funds, seems to us a sensible way for the compassionate public to get through to these papers with their humanitarian message and we can only support them in their campaign."

As a consequence, Vaults has vowed to donate any funds generated from the ad, as well as a lump sum raised from a Christmas gig, to the charity Help Refugees.

Stop Funding Hate's co-founder Richard Wilson said: “We welcome The Vaults’ compassionate and heartwarming statement, and the spirit of goodwill to all that it represents. We have great respect for John Lewis’s values, and we hope that they will respond positively to today’s news.”

Last week Wilson switched his focus to John Lewis for helping to fund papers like the Daily Mail whose values are ‘the opposite’ of those the brand trumpets in its Christmas ad. The campaign got its first win two weeks ago when Lego publicly announced it had “finished the agreement with The Daily Mail”.

On Thursday (24 November) John Lewis responded to the calls, announcing it would not halt advertising in the papers: “We fully appreciate the strength of feeling on this issue but we never make an editorial judgement on a particular newspaper.”

John Lewis Christmas Advertising

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